


The Summoned

by Editor1



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Coming of Age, Dark Comedy, Demonic Possession, Demons, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gratuitous Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Novel, Original Character(s), POV First Person, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 98,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28343088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Editor1/pseuds/Editor1
Summary: Andrew is a nerdy high school guy who thinks God doesn't exist. Shocking revelation for him when he finds out religion is real by accidentally summoning a demon. Now what the hell is he supposed to do?
Relationships: Calce/Andrew





	1. This Was A Bad Idea

ANDREW

The air was dull, wet and muggy. Droplets from the ceiling dripped pinprick by pinprick onto my shoulder, and I tried hard not to flinch each time. It was terrifying to not be able to see more than a foot in front of my face. Occasionally there’d be the sound of a foot scuffing against the floor, or a cough that someone couldn’t get rid of but otherwise, the silence was deafening. It must have been the quietest I’d ever heard a group of a dozen other guys become.

It was more than the silence though, it was the anxiety that I was in the wrong place and most definitely in the wrong time. I could have been at Jesse’s enjoying the time I had off, having a sleepover with my friends. At least, I thought they had been my friends. But this development was starting to make me question that. Being dragged to a frat house on the edge of town beside a forest known for people going missing – and for something like this? - was making me question their judgement.

It had been Dean’s idea originally. He was the friend you always had in your group that seemed to know somebody that knew somebody that was dangerous enough that you shouldn’t tell your parents at the small degrees of separation. In this case it was his older brother. Corey was one of the many frat brothers that used the summer house here as a home to get away from the city university, and in his break he’d discovered the wonders of anyone who lived under a religious parent’s thumb. Satanic cults, of course. It hadn’t taken long for him to grab several of his own peers and a guy who claimed to have more knowledge on it than any of them put together – Jack I think his name was – and they were off trying to recruit as many as they could into the movement. Of course, only the “trusted” individuals were accepted. Dean’s connections had brought us in even though we were still in the middle of high school, but I wasn’t as crazed about this whole idea as he was.

I was just a kid, and if my parents knew what I was doing, I knew the fury would be biblical. It didn’t help that my father was the pastor for the fucking town. It was all I could do to stay calm as that thought plunged through my head. I had to remind myself, it was just candle essence and hype. Nothing more than that. That witchcraft book they’d gotten from the secondhand store was nothing more than a façade to separate people from their money. That’s all it was, and I wasn’t going to hell.

Another reason I tried not to freak out was the bet that Dean had pushed me into. Five dollars had to be paid out to the first person to crack. I was pushed into while broke, and that handing out fifteen dollars I didn’t have to Dean, Raymond and Jesse didn’t sound fun. It kept me stuck in this basement with my toes curled inside my shoes trying not to sprint out the door the first chance I got.

"Silence!" I turned around wildly, searching for the voice. I couldn't see anything. I tried to listen, and heard the faintest of sneaker footsteps against the stone floor. Sounded like the college kids were approaching, which meant the thing could finally be done with.

"Dude, none of them are saying anything," Someone else jeered near where the first had spoke. This one was older, and I think I recognized it as Corey but I couldn’t be sure.

"You must all… All… Wait give me a second..." There was another whisper but even among the silence I couldn’t grasp what it was. "Okay, I got it. Fine, before you become full members of our cult, you must renounce your feeling towards God and the almighty, and believe in Satan as your true God!" I winced enough that it felt like a spasm. That kind of talk would have gotten me hit if I’d spoken in front of my father that way. No one spoke like that. Especially not around here. But I heard Raymond speak the rehearsed response beside me and the others chimed in with the same monotone in their voices. I didn’t say a word. Maybe I didn’t believe in any of this, but it still felt wrong. Cringey, too.

I heard the voices of my friends chime in along with Ray and no one seemed to notice one less voice among the twelve of us.

Thankfully, that’s all it seemed was required. After what had seemed like eternity, Corey turned on the lights and let the bright harsh glow of the basement lightbulbs ruin our eyes. "Congrats." He said with a smirk to his brother and the rest of us. "Now all of you are going to hell."

.....

You wouldn’t think that the four of us belonged together. Raymond was a skater who seeked the high of adrenaline constantly, and who’s skin color led to a few of the more bigoted parents worried about who their children might be associating with. He contributed to the stereotype and seemed to invite that worry wherever he went, though. He revelled in that racist fear just for the feeling of being singled out, and in turn, was revered. Jesse was a prep who had everything he wanted. Straight As? Of course, with the promise of getting into a city university. Girls? Absolutely, with looks that drew heads. Not to mention the okay from any family of a girl he bothered to date. No one would ever believe he was actually quite busy enjoying making out with the AV guy behind the bleachers, but that was a secret I don’t think even I was supposed to know. Then there was Dean. He was the one that had drawn us into the madness that followed, and you could tell just from looking at him that he wanted to act the part. He’d raided his younger sister’s black eyeliner supply, and one day after returning to our quiet little town from the city down south, he’d brought with him enough pentagram decorated clothing to draw demons to him like honey. The resident gothic outcast, he loved the whole idea of the Satanic. He may have gotten it from his brother, but I never stayed around their house long enough to learn more about them.

And then you get to me. Too goody two shoes to be like Dean and Raymond, too gangly and awkward to be like Jesse. Just a brown haired, brown eyed average joe who had bullies no matter what my friends were. Not even moving to this small town had changed that. The city, or Ridgeden, both had people that just loved picking on the little guy just because they liked to dress properly, or act like a presentable human being. Maybe I was a little bitter, but living a life in fear every time I walked to school wasn’t the most enjoyable high school experience.

"Andrew, get the candles, come on!" I was snapped out of my thoughts to see Raymond punching my shoulder lightly to get my attention. Day dreaming by the window of the guest bedroom had gotten me unfocused. I hadn’t even closed the curtains like Dean asked, and the dying sun was ruining the aesthetic he wanted. Sweeping the heavy fabric until the two sides met, I turned back to Ray as I headed for the closet. There was a reason we’d ended up closer than acquaintances. I’d fixed his skateboard once through trial and error, and that was more than could be said for the guy that he tried to take it to. Useful was the main reason a lot of these people bothered with me, but their company was enough for me to not mind. 

"Okay, do you have the circle set up?" I asked as I gripped open the closet door and fumbled for the last of my mothers' emergency candle supply that we saved for severe blackouts.

"Yep, and Deans' got the book he "borrowed" from Corey." I smiled slightly with a laugh. It was just like Dean to grab a book like that under the nose of his brother, even if it was full of crap. The pentagram symbol was like a shiny light and he was the moth. It reminded me of when we’d met. I was reading in the library just soaking up as many books as I could and he caught me at the perfect time for him. I was reading a book about vampires that he seemed to recognize, and he wouldn’t stop talking ever since then about how I liked demons and the occult just as much as he did. I had to be his friend of course. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t even like the book, but at least he never asked me about it. Nor did he ever tell my parents that I had my nose in some questionable material, a godsend really.

I passed by Jesse gripping tightly onto his own supplies as he headed through into my room again. He paused to look around, then wiped his forehead and I had to grin as the streak of white chalk on his forehead remained. “Jesse, you got a little something there.” He blinked, then wiped his head again and glanced at the back of his hand.

“Ah, thanks. You got the candles?” I held them up.

“Not black, but they’ll work, right? It didn’t exactly specify that it HAD to be black. I bet Dean won’t even notice.”

“Probably not.” He set down the blocks of chalk and began drawing as Raymond began to move the furniture out of the way.

“You know…” I began as I followed Jesse over to where he was crouched. “We could have done this at your place, or Dean’s- or you know, anywhere other than mine.” He rolled his eyes, then pointed on of the pieces of chalk at my chest.

“You already know why we’re doing this,” He argued. “Dean’s a no go, I got parents home and Ray can’t either. It’s not like we’re even going to be here long.” I bit my lip as I scratched the back of my neck, then set down the candles beside him.

“I mean, you’re not wrong. But still… I’m just freaked out a little about all this. What if my dad saw a fucking pentagram on my floor? It’s hardwood too, you know what happens to hardwood if you scuff it?”

“You’re such a sissy,” He laughed and returned to drawing. “You sure you’re not the gay one?”

“I didn’t mean it but-“

“Hey, you guys done talking? I want to do this thing already.” I jumped up as Dean entered with a lopsided grin as he held the book up high in the air already dog-marked for the page he wanted.

“Yeah, I’m just nervous is all,” I glanced to the side at Raymond, who just gave a thumb’s up. “I don’t think it’s going to work but…”

  
“Not going to work?” He scoffed. “Quitter’s talk. Jack said this was going to work if we ever did it, we just had to have the strength. And look at us, we have a whole team here to do it. There’s no way we can’t manage it. Maybe he doesn’t know about this, that’s fine. But we can prove our worth and you know how Jack acts around people that take initiative, right? We’d be heroes at that frat house.” I so badly wanted to tell him that this was all fake. None of this existed, but that glimmer in his eyes made me hold my tongue. It wouldn’t be long before he realized it himself anyways. I think all of us were just doing this for his benefit anyways. There was a fear inside me, but it was more the idea of getting caught rather than ending up with something more dangerous on our hands. Maybe even Dean knew deep inside that this wouldn’t work; maybe he was just doing this because he wanted to try to develop the reputation as the guy that tried to summon a demon.

A pretty big step in the witchcraft world to go from initiation straight to summoning, I know. Dean was just a little too enthusiastic.

“So is there anything else we’re missing?” Raymond broke an awkward silence settling over all of us. Dean promptly shook his head as he paused to thumb through the book.

“No, athame’s checked, chalk is fine, candles – I’d prefer black, but I guess we can use white… We have the book, and a bunch of people here - Yeah, we’re good. It just warns us to be careful, have salt around just in case, and a cross if things get messy… Andrew you got one right?” I held up the wooden one in my hands that I’d plucked from the hallway.

“Yeah, all good.” He grinned.

“Then we’re fine. If they try to kill us, we’ll have some kind of defense. Just be aware guys, it’s probably going to manifest as little more than a spirit, so we might not even see it more than feel it.” Sounded just a little too convenient for people to believe.

“Sounds disappointing,” Jesse chimed in instead. I was far too shy to ever voice a concern among them. “Not the whole wings and horns thing they talk about? Or even an animal’s faced human thing? I saw those on the internet.”

“I’m not sure we have the strength for that,” The goth reasoned. “We’ll need a hell of a lot more people for something that big.” He was taking it so, so seriously. I felt more and more sorry for him the more he talked about it.

I didn't really want anything to do with this, but I couldn't show my only friends that I was worried, or that I didn’t believe in any of this junk. Not after I found there was nothing to be afraid of when two weeks after initiation I was still in one piece. I didn't suddenly spontaneously combust when I entered the local church, nor when I was "accidentally" sprinkled with holy water by Jesse, who thought it would be funny to hear me scream. Since then I’d become more and more disillusioned with the whole thing, but I’d continue this drudgery if it meant I could still hang out around my friends.

“Okay,” Dean took one last look at the circle designs and my spacing of the candles, then at the book, then took a breath. “We’re good to go. Everyone take your positions and I’ll light everything up.” He didn’t need to tell me twice. I moved quickly, and the others followed suit until we were all centered around the circle big enough for someone to walk around comfortably, or big enough for something monstrous conglomerate to shuffle around. The door was left unlocked so we could run if the place caught on fire, and we all put on our respective hoodies to copy the hooded figures in the book. I felt even sillier when I did that and looked around at the others with their shoulders hunched as they waited for Dean to say the next step that we all knew was coming from his constant blathering about it.

Lastly, the lights were turned down, and we all fell quiet. For a moment, it felt almost solemn. The candles glowed around us, casting interesting shadows on our faces.

“I’m starting,” Dean finally murmured, then began to speak under his breath a few words that I recognized as the start of the incantation. I glanced at his concentrating face as he tried to his make his way through the Latin with all the skill of a tenth-grade dead language student, then I heard Jess say something a little closer to me as it passed onto the next guy. We went around the circle a few times, each of taking a few turns to say some of the words. The circle in front of us was supposed to glow or something, but all I saw was my moms' oak floor covered in chalk. My heart sunk. The longer it was on there, the more difficult it would be to take it off.

Finally, as the last sentence ended on Dean. We stared at each other in silence for a moment longer. I was about to say something, when all the candles around the room went out.

There was a nervous laugh from Ray. “Bet Andre forgot to close the window. Man, I was already on your case and you still didn’t?”

“No, I did,” I protested. “Maybe it was from the door.” I stopped talking when a red glow started to illuminate the room emanating from the circle of chalk that had been drawn. The five-pointed star in the center was starting to brighten with this strange red hue and I felt the back of my throat go dry as I realized what it meant. We all stared at it bug eyed for another second in silence. It was real. It was actually real and something was actually happening. My heart was beating so fast that I was sure the others could hear it, but I couldn’t move a muscle away from where I was. I don’t think I could get the roots that my legs had become to move if I tried.

"S-screw this!” Jesse spoke up. “I'm getting out of here!" I saw him sprinting for the door from my peripheral vision and my heart sank when I saw the others following not long after. I wanted to say something but it was stuck at the back my throat along with the freak-out I so desperately wanted to act out. Not to mention at least Jesse owed me five dollars for that damn bet they were still holding me to. But when even Dean ran for it with a look of fear and surprise in his eyes, I felt the sinking feeling in my stomach that I was fucked.

I finally broke my vision clear away from the glowing circle to look at the door, but I still couldn’t find it within me to move. Why was my body reacting this way? Was it so stupid that it couldn’t decide between a fight or flight response? Instead this frozen position was going to get me killed. I turned back at the circle and took a deep breath before moving my foot just an inch enough to reach the chalk circle. The logic that breaking the design’s shape would make this stop turned out to be fault, and it just glowed all the brighter. No good. There was nothing I could do.

Before my eyes there was a crack that sounded like wood splitting apart and then between the two pieces of the floorboards rose a long and thing hand of some skeleton clawing itself up as though it were reaching desperately for the edge of a cliff. More and more of it appeared as it pulled itself up and I thanked my body internally that at least I hadn’t peed myself yet. It was tearing my mind apart from shock as the human skeleton pulled itself up to it’s chest, then used a thin white leg to get the rest of the way onto the floor. As it moved to stand, skin was already growing on it as piece by piece this thing seemed to gain more human characteristics. The muscle grow over its structure, then the skin and I began to realize the body was female. I couldn’t turn away as the clothes began to appear too. Grey fabric of the top half of a suit with a tie barely held together by buttons, beige slacks that led to feet covered by bright red sneakers. Finally, the head finished forming, and as the final pieces fell into place I took in her black spiked hair striped with a streak of white, and perhaps the most inhuman part of her; her dark and blood colored eyes with the pupils of a cat.

The circle’s glow faded to nothing, leaving the room in darkness save for the small streaks of light from the curtain. But even in the darkness, I could see the faint light of her eyes glowing like embers from only a few feet away. I realized I was far closer to her than I felt comfortable with. But perhaps comfortable was having her back in her bloody hell dimension and not right in front of me.

I waited for a moment to see what might happen, but then I looked at her eyes more carefully, and they seemed dull somehow. Dead. I wanted to take a step closer, but logic was preventing me from carrying out a death sentence. So I just took in her face. She was kind of pretty, I guess. Skinny, and a shorter than me by a fair bit. Her hands were tiny compared to mine though. I leaned in just enough to see her closer and noticed her skin was considerably darker. Not like Ray’s but noticeable even in the dark. As I leaned in just a little closer, her eyes lit up in life and I reeled back as she tilted her head like a bird would survey something interesting. I yelled out something I barely understood and fell onto my side before crawling towards the upended furniture Raymond had pushed to the side with a heart practically beating out of my chest. A cold and clammy hand sought purchase gripping the side of a desk and I held onto it like it was some kind of flotation device and I was in the middle of the ocean. I tried to breathe slowly but hyperventilating proves difficult to stop when there was a fucking demon in front of you.

I choked out a cough when she laughed. The voice was crackly, but it at least sounded human. 

“Interesting reaction,” She chuckled. “You good, dude?” She tried to take a step towards me, but stopped when she tried to push through. It was like she was a mime in a glass box, but this was proving more and more frustrating to her as she kicked at it. I was afraid of seeing how she’d act if she got angry.

"Um, hey, kid." She grumbled. “Do you know how to finish this thing?”

I tentatively shook my head from the safety of under the desk, and she rolled her eyes.

“Okay, get that book on the ground, and turn to the page about guardians and familiars. Do you understand that?” I nodded again, but the thought of walking across the room and possibly coming into contact with her was making me want very much to stay where I was. It took another minute of her growling as she pawed at the invisible barrier before I decided to crawl towards the overturned piece of reading that Dean had left when he’d ran. I gripped it quickly with trembling fingers and quickly found the passage she was referring to, then turned again to her for her response.

“Good.” She grinned, and my blood ran cold as I took note of the pointed teeth that looked like a shark’s maw. “Does it say anything about making familiars?”

“Ah…” I barely made a noise as I looked down quickly to the words. I could barely read it in the dark light and it strained my eyes further with the small text. “It’s got an incantation for it,” I whispered.

“Use it, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“What?” I flinched. “But I-I… How can I trust you on something like that? You’re a… a…”

“That spell should say this keeps me under your care, without any chance of me harming you. A guardian, got it?” I looked down at the book to clarify, then nodded.

“Yeah… But how can I be sure?” She shrugged.

“The alternative is I’m stuck here in this stupid circle until you figure out how to banish me, and I don’t want to go back. So if you can do this, I will show you that I won’t hurt you.” She motioned to the salt and cross left forgotten on the ground. “And hey, use that on me if you want. You have some insurance.”

My throat tightened as I gripped the book harder and thought for a split second, then read out the incantation without giving myself the chance to second guess myself. Even as I did I felt my heart beating in my throat and at the back of my mind was the nagging feeling I’d made a terrible mistake. Maybe I had, but it seemed that the demon was satisfied.

With a sigh of relief, she stepped out of the circle, and I was now little more than defenseless.


	2. Fuck No This was a BAD Idea

"Hello," She spoke in a more formal tone. She held a hand out to me and I flinched again at the sudden movement. But she only laughed as she let her hand drop and instead find its way into her pocket. "I'm not going to bite your head off, I’m a man of my word. The name's Calce, and you must be my summoner." I stared at her in a mix or terror and confusion.

"I was... I was just... I didn't summon you." I squeaked quietly. That grin I was so afraid of widened. 

"Oh really? It looks like you did, seeing as you're the only warlock here who managed to finish the job, and since you completed it, that makes me your familiar."

“Well my friends were here, but then th-they um… Left.” She raised an eyebrow and I shrugged in defeat as I lowered my head. But then I glanced up as I tried to look at her even closer than before. There was no way she was real, right? There was no such thing as heaven and hell, and definitely not demons. It was all just a big joke, and I must have been hallucinating. Maybe Dean used some kind of peyote cactus extract, I wouldn’t have put it past him. But I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything, and then that didn’t make sense with them sprinting as fast as they could out of the room. But right now I was looking for any logical conclusion to grasp onto. Staring at this demon girl in front of me, that was getting more and more difficult. 

"Hey, you got any orange pop?" She asked. I shook my head and realized that she’d sunk down to the side of the wall and was half lying there as she stared up at the stucco ceiling with a look of boredom. “I’d love to be able to see more than just some old musty room after escaping hell, you know.”

"Why would you want orange pop?" I asked in surprise.

"It’s one of the few things I can have without throwing it back up like I would normally with human food. Sugary, you know?” She lolled her head over at me, but I could only stare speechlessly back. “I mean, I’d also be good with some human blood, but I doubt that you in the state you’re in right now would ever agree to that, right?” 

I nodded mutely. 

“The last time I was here,” she continued. “They’d just come up with the stuff. It was great. I’m glad they didn’t discontinue it. Wait, they didn’t, did they?” 

“No…” I managed. The shock of her was starting to wear off slowly, but in it’s place was just this strange confusion at her personality. It was truly like she was just some bratty girl with the mind of a demon to go with it. Which I could deal with. And keeping her around with a pastor for a father and overall religious family was not on my list of things to do.

"I'm not about to give you sugary drinks,” I blurted out. “In fact, I'm going to send you back. It would be better for all of us if you just went back to where you came from, demon. You’ll probably kill someone the first chance you get.” I went over to pick up the book, but was beaten to it by the girl. She held it up as she stood up straight, and raised her eyebrows as she let it hang open from one end. Her eyes grazed over the pages as she let them fall one by one, before glancing at me in surprise. 

"You summoned me with this piece of crap?” She laughed. “How’d you manage something like that? This looks like it’s been completely rewritten to be just a bunch of fake voodoo and witchcraft. None of this should have even worked.” She glanced back to it again. “Maybe if you’d tried hard enough, you could have gotten a poltergeist, but me? Man…”

“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “This is Jack and Corey’s book- i-it’s supposed to be the real thing, and powerful too!” 

“Whatever someone told you about the merits of this book, they’re lying- wait.” She paused, then looked through it again at a certain section. “There’s some pieces written in.” 

“Where?” I tried to look over her shoulder but she held it away from me. 

“Over some of the chapters. Didn’t you bother to look through this properly? You’re a warlock, you’re supposed to know your material thoroughly and completely.” 

“Well, again, it’s not mine, and I really should be getting that back, and honestly I was just along for the ride with this other guy-“ Her hand glowed red and the book burst into a chorus of flames. I stared in shock for a split second before reaching with a cry to grab it from her, but it was already ash falling to the floor in the span of only a moment or two. Gone, incomprehensible, with nothing but burns on my hands to show for it.

"Why would you do that?" I asked in agony. “That book was borrowed from a high-ranking cult member. Dean’s going to kill me when he finds out about this. The frat house’ll take turns…” 

“Relax, no one is going to hurt you. Didn’t you hear? I’m your guardian now, like a familiar. They can’t touch you.” She let her head fall to the side with a smirk. “You made the decision to trust me, so now I’m going to show you that I can be trusted.” 

“I….” I sighed. “I really don’t feel comfortable with this. At all. I was just pulled into this whole thing – maybe you should meet Dean, he’d probably feel better about this than me. And he was just here, he started this whole thing.” 

“Well, your friend Dean apparently left before I even arrived, and you were the one to tie me to you, so it’s not like you can just give me away.” I was about to respond with some kind of quip but she was already wandering to the door and opening it without a word. She poked her head out into the hall and I followed quickly with my hand on the knob ready to close it. 

“Seriously!” I cried out. “My parents can’t know about this. My dad – if he knew, he’d kill me! Do you realize what you even are? Maybe if you just leave, then you can do what you want and stop bothering me.” 

She sighed and turned away for a moment as she stood in the hall. “First, can I have that pop?” She glanced back at me, and this time her grin was gone. “Unless you’d let me have a little blood.” 

I paled. “Fine – I’ll get you some soda or something. I’m sure there’s something in the kitchen, if that’ll get you to sh-shut up about it.” I looked at her for a second, then turned back with a flinch and went back inside the guest room to rub out what I could of the chalk and move the candles back. There was some wax on the floor, but with the furniture carefully positioned I’m sure it would take years before she’d notice anything. I took a step back once I’d finished to survey the room, then sighed in relief. It looked relatively normal, and if it weren’t for the product of the escapade, I’d almost think it never happened at all. “Okay,” I turned back around to her watching me from the doorframe. “I’ll get your drink, and then you’re out of here.” 

“I can’t leave,” She shrugged. 

“What do you mean, can’t leave?” I clenched my hands. “You could just walk out of here. You didn’t like it in there, right?” 

“No, but see, that’s the problem.” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s great to be out here, but I’m now stuck attached to my summoner. You and I, we’re mystically connected. I literally can’t leave.” 

“Fuck…” I breathed. “Great, just great. How the hell am I supposed to hide you, then?” 

“Ahhh…” She paused. My eyes widened when I heard the sound of the door opening downstairs. 

“Andrew?” My mother called out. “We’re home, dinner’s in an hour!” I looked at Calce with a panicked expression. 

“Seriously, some way of hiding would be great right now,” I whispered. 

“They don’t sound like they’re coming here,” She hissed. “Just go down, get me a drink, and I’ll be hiding up here. That’s not hard, right? Then we both win; I’m in no danger of being found in – what is this, a guest room? Your room? Whatever, no one’s about to run in here.” She wasn’t wrong, and I bit my lip. 

"Fine," I breathed. "But be quiet, and stay here, I have a sister and she might be going up here to her room. Just stay in here, and don’t say a word." She nodded and inside I felt relieved that she at least agreed to this among all this obsession with soda. But even still, she looked at me fiercely as she stepped back into the room with those shining eyes of hers. She was much shorter than me now we were closer, but I still found her oddly intimidating. 

“Thank you.” I closed the door behind me, then walked through the beige hallway lined with dull pictures of my family along it pretending to be happy with each other. Sometimes we were, but living with an older sister that seemed to hate me for my existence and parents that tried to keep us in a bubble of religion and chastity, there was an obvious strain the older we got. You could even see it in the most recent photos that were meant for Christmas cards. But it wasn’t like any of us were about to draw attention to it. 

My steps grew quieter as I headed into the kitchen and paused when I heard the television start up. It wouldn’t be long before they made their way into the kitchen, and I wasn’t about to deal with them. Perhaps it would be the social butterfly sister hassling me about entering the kitchen when she was supposed to be doing dishes, or maybe the straight and narrow white picket fence father about to accost me about what I’d been on the internet for all day. We were all such cookie cutter people, really. Weren’t we supposed to be happy? I was meant to be the sporty younger brother that would eventually get a football scholarship and play professionally. But it only took one look at me to realize that would never happen. At least, to a normal person. My mother understood my heart was learning philosophy and math, but my dad seemed to think that studies should come second nature to living vicariously through him. It was always one thing or the other with him. Either I needed to be more godly, or I needed to tell him when I was going to the new season’s tryouts for the football team. 

I swiped the soda quickly and just as I heard footsteps making their way to the kitchen, I sprinted out of there and back up the steps. I heard my name being called over my shoulder, but it was just my mom, and I don’t think she even knew I was there for certain. I was fine and free to go until I eventually had to face them all again at dinner. That was going to be a nightmare all its own. 

As I walked up the stairs, I noticed that all of the other guy’s backpacks were gone. It seemed they left the house entirely. I didn’t blame them, but it still annoyed me that they’d leave this mess with me and force me to pick up the pieces. Though… The idea of having a demon with me would certainly make them jealous. At the very least, Dean would never shut up about how amazing I’d become. Perhaps there were silver linings to everything. 

“Calce?” I called out when I opened the door, and she held out a hand to signal her presence from just behind the door. 

“Yo, sugar me.” 

“Why were you behind the door?” I asked. 

“Best hiding spot.” She twirled around with a grin and took a few steps back. “Come on, throw it. I’m wide open.” 

“I can’t throw for shit…” I mumbled. 

“Don’t be like that, come on it’s like ten feet. Do it.” Her grin widened toothily and I rolled my eyes. Tossing it to her sent it long by a few feet, but she caught it easily enough anyways despite the poor throw. I cracked a smile when she held it up with fascinated eyes. 

“You pull the tab to open it,” I made the motion for the can as I explained it, then it was my turn to grin when she jumped as it fizzed. 

"Andrew, who are you talking to in there?" My mom called out from the living room, and I jumped as my heartbeat seemed to skip.

"Um, no one mom! Be quiet." I said the last part through gritted teeth. She grinned teasingly, but nodded all the same.

“Okay,” She whispered. “Is there anywhere we can just talk, then?” 

“My room.” I motioned for her to follow me, then paused as I glanced from side to side in the hallway for any sign of my sister. She might have still be out for all I knew, I didn’t exactly keep track of her. But having a demon made me think perhaps I should start timing my comings and goings to avoid anything terrible happening. After a second longer, I shook my head at the ridiculous idea and motioned for her to follow as I moved a few rooms over to the back of the house. 

“Your room, eh?” She whispered behind me as I opened the door. “I wonder how terribly debaucherous it is~ You are a teenage boy after all, aren’t you? Any naked women?”

“Please stop.” I sighed. “It’s nothing like that.” 

“Aw come on, I signed for the classic repressed teenage boy experience.” She whined as she followed me through the threshold into perhaps the one sanctum I had. It was embarrassing to show her all the horror movie posters, along with the occasional animation and action story. I never had anyone else in here other than my friends and even they barely spent any time here thanks to my parents. But to have her here, it was strange. She might have been a demon, but she was still a girl. And this was just overly awkward to me. 

She smirked to herself when she looked over the main antagonist of one of the movies; a demon to my chagrin. It was a big reason I didn’t let my family in here. 

"Does that look anything like you?" I asked curiously as I logged onto my computer and closed out of the most questionable tabs before Calce could notice. It was only a few clicks away and I was on the page of a certain overly social friend that I knew for a fact was online if he was at home. Jesse was about to get an earful for leaving me alone, and the rest of them too if I ever got a hold of them. 

"Does it look like me to you? No, I don't have hooves, nor horns. At least, not in this body." I turned around to see her bouncing a bit on my bed, and went back to screaming at Jesse. I got lost in the one-sided conversation that I knew was going to end with him appeasing me if simply so he could get me to do his philosophy homework again. But still, the rant made me feel a little better about my friends abandoning me to what they thought was a hellish demon. They weren’t wrong. Then I paused. 

“What do you mean, in this body?” I blinked. She chuckled. 

“This is just the form I have so I don’t scare the shit out of everyone I meet.” She shrugged and lay back on the bed. “I’m not just this, you know.” I looked back at her. 

“You know, we should probably have a talk about all the weird mysteries you have up your sleeve. Like, this blood thing for example. Am I going to have to give you mine or something? Because I have to say, I’m not looking forward to you feeding on me like a vampire if that’s what you mean.” 

“Hey, it’s not that bad.” She kicked out half-heartedly at me from at least ten feet away with no real meaning behind it. “You don’t have much to worry about, really. I can hide in plenty of ways.” 

"Andrew?" I jumped at that voice and accidentally exited out of the tab. The snarky tone, the sarcastic way she said everything, that was so obviously Sara. My sister must have come in at the same time for her to already be at my door and about to ask me something. 

"Hide!" I whispered fiercely to Calce. The anxiety rose as she blinked in surprise at the knock that followed the voice on the door, then jumped into the air. Time seemed to stand still as I stared at her form. In one moment she was a human looking girl, and in another, she was a massive dark brown bat as large as a dinner plate. She made not a single noise as she half jumped from the bed to the side of my end table and behind it out of sight. And suddenly, I felt like I really had taken hard drugs.

Sam burst open the door as I stared at the bed speechlessly. "Mom says it's your turn to set the table." Could only look from the bed to her in mute shock, but she just glared at me. “Do you even hear what I’m saying?”

“Sam...” I couldn’t even think of anything to say. She seemed to notice the pale shocked expression, but she just raised an eyebrow. 

“Did something on the internet scare you, baby brother?”

“N-no, I…” 

“Whatever,” She grunted. “I’m not waiting around for whatever stupidity you’re doing. I did see your friends biking back to their places. My guess is they were here, right?” I shook my head, but she just shrugged. “That’s fine if you don’t want to own up to it. But if they came into my room, it’s you who’s getting their ass beat, understand?” She pointed a finger at me accusatorily, then slammed the door shut so hard that the house around it seemed to creak. 

“Calce?” I managed to squeak. “Are you… What was that?” I saw a flash of something from behind the end table, and then a demon’s face poke their head out from behind it with a sheepish grin. 

“That might have been another one of those mysteries you said we should talk about.” I couldn’t take my eyes away from the unknown entity in my room. 

“That probably should have been high on the list,” I wavered. 

“Sorry – ah, what was your name again?” 

“Andrew.” 

“Oh, right, sorry. There’s a few things about me, but most of it you’ve already seen. I’m a regular run of the mill demon, right?” I shook my head. 

“Nothing I’ve read about demons has been normal about you so far.” She chuckled as she went back to my bed, lying back down with a happy sigh. 

“Well, I guess I’m stronger than most. I got fire, strength, and speed on my side. And that little transformation you just saw.” 

“Into a bat?” I asked. 

“No, a flying fox,” She corrected. “Basically, a big, big bat. It’s just a part of who I am.” 

“Okay…” I tried to piece everything together. “You’re an overly strong demon that I… accidentally summoned, who’s not normal according to anything I’ve researched, and you… you’re stuck to me, right?” 

“Completely.” I sighed.

“Fuck.” 

….

I ate my meal in a nervous silence around the carefully considered dinner table knowing full well that just inside my backpack under my seat was a tropical bat that also happened to be an actual demon. Living, breathing demon? I hadn’t had the chance to ask. But it set me on edge even more than before, and I was already liking dinners around the family less and less as of late. 

“So, Andrew,” My father started the conversation first, and I knew what was going to happen next. I dreaded it, more than anything. “Have you talked with the coach yet about getting into this season?” 

“No, dad.” I grumbled as I poked at a meatball. “I’ve been busy with school.” 

“But you already do so well with school,” my mother chimed in. “You’ve been getting wonderful marks, even better than your friend Jesse. I’m sure you could get into any school, why don’t you try something extracurricular?” I sighed, then jumped when the backpack beneath me twitched. 

“I’ll think about,” I mumbled. 

“Andrew.” That was my father’s firm voice. Now I had to listen. “I’ve been talking with your mother, and we both agree that your future is set to be great no matter what you do. But it would make us, both of us, especially proud if you would consider shoring up all of your weaknesses and turning them into strengths. Like football, son. And taking church more seriously. You’ve thought about it, right? Taking Sunday school again?” I shook my head sharply as I pushed my seat away from the table. 

“I’m done eating,” I quipped. “May I please be excused?” 

“I… I suppose,” my mother sighed, but I didn’t have the time for a guilt trip. Not only were they pushing more than usual, but the anxiety of watching my bag move slowly towards my sister’s foot was turning me into a massive ball of nerves and I wasn’t sure I could take much longer. So I grabbed it quickly, mentioned something under my breath about studying and left the table before another word about my possible futures could be said. 

Before long I was back on the computer, not really paying attention to the feed that slipped by my gaze with a demon bouncing on my bed looking more than a little amused. 

“So, your dad’s a pastor?” I could hear the smirk in her voice, and flinched as I sighed. 

“Yes. Just, stay low around them. I don’t want any of them finding out.” 

“No no, I got it, don’t say a word, I’m not here. Sorry about freaking you out in that backpack, it was rather difficult to stay still with my wings getting caught on all those internal buckles.” I simply waved off her apology and returned to my computer. This time, I was determined to find something on here that could help explain things, though perhaps I wasn’t in my right mind to do so with everything moving a mile a minute.

"So is there anything else to do besides just stare at you stalk your friends on Facebook all day? Because this is kind of boring."

"I'm not going outside with you. For all I know someone might try to… To exorcise you or something." She laughed heartily, and I flinched at how loud it was. I knew it was impossible for anyone to hear us in the back of the house, but she was getting loud enough that it was still making me uncomfortable. 

“I mean, it’s possible,” She reasoned after a while. “But I don’t think I would as long as I stayed secret in that backpack of yours. Just maybe try to get those straps off.” I tried to ignore her and searched through link after link with my hands still shaking from this anxiety I couldn’t get rid of. One search, something about demons of fire. Another, talking about their strength. But when it came to guardians and familiars, it was almost nothing. Apparently this just didn’t happen with this kind, because from what I could read with these shaky hands, demons like these in lore were far too unpredictable and dangerous to handle. No one did this. I was alone. And according to the same sites, a familiar was meant to last until the day I died. And then, I read through with a gulp, I was headed for hell. 

Great, so I can't get rid of her, and I was going to the place that had haunted my dreams up until a few years ago when I had convinced myself it didn’t exist. 

It didn’t help how much they stressed the inevitable outsmarting of me, the death of me by my demon’s own hands through indirect means, and beyond all of the terrible things that would happen once I had entered hell for happening to me what she kept labelling me; a warlock. All of the signs kept pointing towards getting rid of her. Maybe an exorcism was the best bet here. Pride over accomplishing something like this was nothing in comparison to all the terrible shit these sites were telling me I would go through. 

I looked back at Calce as I mulled over the toxicity going through my head and saw her grab one of the forgotten footballs by the side of my bed. She looked it over in her hands, then threw it up into the air with a bored expression. She caught it, smiled to herself, and threw it up again, this time hitting her head by accident as it sailed back down. I jumped as she in a rage hissed at the ball and threw it across the room, where it hit a blank part of the wall. The dented pigskin fell to the ground, and I saw a large dent in the dry wall complete with a pattern of lacework ingrained inside. 

"Remind me not to get you angry." I murmured to myself. She grinned, and the bright smile caused my heart to race. This fear seemed to mount whenever I looked at her. There was something akin to a caged lion in my house, and if she ever caught wind that I was thinking of trying to get rid of her, I knew she wouldn’t be happy. And at the same time, these things she promised were pretty great themselves. Never being hurt? I’d have someone to finally fight back against people I was too afraid to face. I wouldn’t be afraid to walk to school anymore. And among my friends, I’d be considered more than just a token nerd that did all their homework for them. I could be someone. 

I supposed this was how deals with the devil get forged. 

My research continued with a slight change in subject matter of learning more about demons as a whole. I’d been researching before this whole debacle for what was meant to be purely theoretical for Dean’s sake, but now I was in a greater fervor as there were far more important reasons to know how to deal with these creatures. I heard the ball being played with again, and knew she’d gone back to playing catch with herself. I gave her little more than a warning to be quiet, with my real focus on the computer screen. Out of nowhere, a small thought appeared in my head. There was a girl in my room. And she wasn’t going anywhere. At least in some way, I was crossing something off my teenage bucket list. 

It was late by the time I gave up my search into familiars and guardian demons with little more than what I already knew under my belt. Today was Sunday. In all honesty it was probably one of the worst days we could have picked for this sort of thing. Only hours ago, I had been in church, and now? There was a demon just feet away from me. 

Far too late in the evening I decided it was time for bed, and stretched from the computer desk I’d been at for far too long as I grabbed my things to change in the bathroom, where Calce would most definitely not be following. I locked the door for good measure, but it didn’t seem like she was interested in bothering me anyways. Still, I liked my privacy. She wasn’t about to trick me, if the posts online were to be believed. It would start small, and grow until nothing I did could be trusted. But in a way I almost believed Calce more than those posts somehow. She seemed more trustworthy than the paranoid ramblings of stories that could have been entirely made up. Perhaps all of my research had been fiction. I wondered, how many of the pages that I had looked through had merit? Did any of them? If even someone like me could summon a demon, wouldn’t they be more documented and easily understood? It didn’t make any sense. 

I left the bathroom, then fell into bed with a groan as I got under the covers. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t alone.

"Um... Calce, do you think maybe you could..." 

"What?" She asked.

“Well, the bed… You…” I glanced to the floor. I didn’t want to be rude and tell her to sleep there, but there wasn’t anywhere else for her. I gritted my teeth. At least she was above the covers. 

“Nevermind,” I mumbled, and turned away. 

“It’s the bed thing, isn’t it?” She poked my shoulder, and I twitched away from her touch out of shock. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t try anything. I’m just like… A big guard dog.” 

“A guard dog.” I mussed over the thought in my head, but it didn’t stick. “I guess.” 

“Just go to sleep, summoner.” Her voice was strangely comforting to me, but I couldn’t place how. Perhaps it was because it was the first time I’d heard her speaking kindly to me. It was odd and definitely out of place with what I’d read. In such a fury of research, I hadn’t really thought to temper it with experience. And she’d listened, and promised me protection. She’d been kind. Kinder than a lot of people I knew, actually. 

“Goodnight… Calce,” I whispered. 

“Night, Andrew.” I shut my eyes tightly as I pulled the covers over my head. I’d always been afraid of monsters in my closet or under my bed. I never thought I’d ever find myself sleeping next to one.


	3. In Hindsight, Not the Best Choice

I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock going off, and the usual schedule was back in play. Reaching for the sound of the thing, I had nearly grabbed it when it was ripped from the desk and thrown against the wall, clanging sharply first against it before settling on the brown carpeted floor. The sharp noise was worse than the alarm itself, and I winced as I rubbed my head, looking over at yet another dent to add to my growing collection in the drywall.

"Damn noise..." I heard someone say from the other side of the bed. I sighed. She wasn’t a dream, and I still had to deal with my life slowly spinning into chaos. I held my tongue off on a response when I realized the meaning behind the alarm clock. God, I still had school.

Leaving the confines of the blankets had me shivering as I ran from there to the dresser, and then to the bathroom as I got changed as quickly as possible. The reason for my speed was my usual punctuality led to me being able to set the alarm so late in the day with the promise that I would be out the door in minutes and to school in an instant, allowing me the amount of sleep I craved. Which was all of it. But with Calce here, I doubted that I’d have the time to do that anymore. Her very existence was upsetting my life and changing the alarm was probably one of the ways I’d have to accommodate for it.

She merely watched me with her hair shaggier than usual as I ran from place to place to grab whatever I needed. A book bag there, a folder here; her face was amused as she watched me. I bit back a biting remark and instead just rolled my eyes. I didn’t have the time to argue with her.

“Why are you spazzing out like this?” I heard her ask, and I sighed when I pulled on my backpack.

“I only have a few minutes to get to school and I’m guessing you’re going to make it more difficult.” She chuckled.

“Well, you’re not wrong, since I’m coming with you.” I blinked in surprise.

“What? Why?”

“Haven’t you learned anything from rushing through all those weird backwater sites?” She drawled. “I have to stay near you. I’m your familiar. We can’t be separated.”

“But… Then I guess, you’re going to be a bat the whole time?” She shrugged as she straightened out her cufflinks, then quickly a ran a hand through her hair. In an instant, she was just as strangely well dressed as before and ready to go.

“If that’s what it takes. I’ll hide in your backpack. And this time, I’ll try a little harder to stay still.”

I shook my head sharply. “This is going to end badly, you know that, right?” She smirked.

“Really, you don’t trust me? I haven’t done anything to show that you can’t.” I bit my lip. I supposed she was right, since the very beginning of my summoning her, she’d tried to be helpful even with her personality. But the fear of a teacher looking through my bags only to find a giant bat inside, that was already giving me anxiety, and nothing was even set in stone yet. But what other choice did I have?

“I suppose I should be grateful that you even have a way to hide,” I sighed. “I guess there’s no other way. Fine. Just be quiet, alright?” She saluted me with a gleaming grin, and the sight of those teeth make me shudder again.

“Aye-aye captain. I won’t let you down.”

“Just Andrew,” I grumbled. “Call me Andrew.”

“Aw, no nicknames? None at all? No, “my summoner” or “my warlock?” Man, you’re kind of boring.” I was already walking out the door and waiting in the hall for her, my voice dropping as I glanced back to see if anyone was still in the house. I left last, but it still didn’t make me feel any less exposed.

“Whatever, if it bothers you that much, then I don’t care. But let’s go, we’re wasting valuable time.” I looked on shock at her transformation into a bat that she did in such a blaise manner, and realized with a closer look that it looked like a flash of light seemed to dot out any of the morphing that I tried to focus on when it happened. It was also in such a split second that there was barely anything to notice anyways. It was like one second she was a human, and the next, there was a bat gliding down in front of me to land and then hold up it’s winged arms for me to pick her up.

She was cute like that, I realized. When she wasn’t looking like some kind of monster disguised as a person and was instead this bat with a face that reminded me of a brown fox, she was like a pet. I picked her up carefully, then placed her inside the bag among the school supplies I’d grabbed, and zipped it up with enough room for her to drag herself out if she needed to at the last minute. Pulling it back onto my shoulders, I felt a little more relief at how nonchalant it looked. No one would notice my bag being a little more full than usual. And with all the student busy in their own lives, I doubted people would notice even if it moved a little. The only problem was that I’d be taking this thing with me to my classes instead of leaving it in my locker which could draw a little more attention. But I doubt it would be much change.

The air was a crisp and cold September morning that I enjoyed as I bit into my apple I’d grabbed from the counter before I’d left, the taste of the toast I’d nearly burned still on my tongue. The coat I wore was supposed to be warm enough for this weather but I still somehow found myself shivering occasionally with the thicker winds that moved through the small suburban neighborhood on its way towards the high school. Being in a small town in the midst of a forest always made the weather cooler and to me it was almost unbearable. Not for the last time, I wished I had an inch more of fat so I’d not have to brave the elements as skin and bones.

“I wonder if you’re cold, Calce.” I glanced back at the backpack, and saw a bat poke it’s head out from the small hole I’d left for her. “Hey, don’t do that, you’ll be spotted.” She shook her head and made a small squeak. I giggled as I turned back around to walking.

“So do you get cold?” I glance back to see her shake her head. “No, I guess not. You’ve got that fire thing going on. I wonder if any elements really affect you…” My voice trailed off as I looked down at my feet. My sneakers scuffed the sidewalk as I continued shuffling along with my mind preoccupied on the whole idea of demons. There were so many things I didn’t know and didn’t understand. She was evidence that what I had believed recently was wrong all along. It made my father right, and that was scary in and of itself.

“So, does that make you like a heater?” I asked out of the blue. There was a squeak, and a nod of her head. “Good, then,” I laughed to myself. “I get cold far too easily.” There was another squeak from her. Every time she made a noise I had to chuckle to myself.

“You know you sound hilarious, right?” An indignant squeak followed and I suppressed another giggle. “It’s like I’m talking to a squeaky toy and it’s trying to have a conversation with me. But strangled, you know? I didn’t know that’s what bats sounded like.” The nose of Calce disappeared back inside the backpack to sulk, and I looked on in amusement.

It was silent other than the sound of birds chirping for several minutes to the point that the sudden voice calling out from behind me made me jump. I started walking faster as my blood pumped quickly in my veins and felt my breath come out in pants as I realized who it had come from.

“Hey, Andrew! Come on, we just wanted to talk!” There was no way I was going to talk to the people behind me. I barely glanced behind me to see how many of them there were. Only five this time, but there could have been more behind the trees that lined the sidewalk. Maybe I was being paranoid for thinking like that. But there wasn’t room for logic in the fear that made my heart jump.

I turned back around, and another one of them called out. I was walking as fast as I could without running and there was a small squeak from inside my backpack that I was moving too fast and causing everything to jumble around. But I didn’t care. I knew who those people were, and they were serious danger.

“Andrew, come on man.” The hand that gripped my shoulder was large and rough and connected to it was someone taller than me and filling it out with muscles no teenager had business having. Peter Michaels grinned at me with that same strange light in his eyes that he seemed to have with everyone he loved to destroy. His buddies were just behind him, but I wasn’t about to dignify them with a glance I their direction. I tried to just nod at him and speed off, but that grip tightened and my throat tightened as he stopped and made me pause with him. “Look at me,” He demanded, but his voice immediately grew lighter when I did as he asked. Staring at him, I felt my legs seize up as they did the night before in a terror not out of the unknown, but out of the exact opposite. I knew that Peter could do to me; what his entire gang could do to me if I didn’t do everything he asked. I’d only been here so long and I was already well acquainted with how violent the welcome party was with them. And that glint in his eyes… There was no escape from being polite this time. He wanted something.

“What is it, Peter,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What?” He put his hand to his ear in a mocking tone. “Can’t hear ya, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“What was that.” His eyes narrowed as the others in his group caught up to us. “Did I hear some tenth grader say he wasn’t a kid? You’re already scrawny as it is.”

“I need to get to class.” I tried to change the subject. “We both should.”

“God you’re such a sissy.” He punched my arm and I winced as I tried to jump back, but his grip remained on my shoulder and kept me forced in place. “It’s not like it’s going to matter if you’re late once in your life. It’s good for your health, you know. Look at us, all twelfth and we’re doing just fine. I even got a hundred on my last history assignment, didn’t you hear?” I paled at the mention of it and felt faint at the predatory grin on his face. His gang all moving up behind him, I was realizing very quickly that the rumors about him could very likely be true. If they were, then that thing in his hoodie was a gun, and he’d used to shoot the history teacher just weeks before. And no one had said a word. I stared at his face with recognition dawning in my eyes, and I felt very small. Why hadn’t anyone talked to the police?

  
“What do you want,” I squeaked. I felt my backpack move, but I paid little attention. I was focused on the murderer in front of me instead and the possibility that I could die at any moment, if he cared that little about human life.

“Oh, I just heard you were great about grades, you know?” He shrugged, then looked over his shoulder to one of the others. “He was, right?”

“Yeah, Jesse said he was great at philosophy and math. He could get us all As if he wanted.” He turned back around with a smirk directed right at me.

“As, huh?” He stated more than asked. “Sounds like a dream come true. Well, we’d all be interested in having some extra help after school so you could do that for us. You wouldn’t mind, would you Andrew? We’d all like to be good friends with you.”

“Did… Did you kill that history teacher?” I asked in shock. I bit my lip at the stupid outburst. I’d completely ignored him, and his smirk disappearing and being replaced with a glare meant I’d probably just signed my death warrant. But I had to know, had he really…. He couldn’t have, could he?

He shrugged, then a smirk played at the corner of his lips as he watched me in utter terror. “Do you really want to know? Or maybe if you did, would you agree to helping us with a little extracurricular teaching? I mean, I’m sorry if we frighten you. I don’t know why everyone seems to think we’re some kind of “gang”. We’re just regular good Samaritans trying to help reach out to nerds that don’t know how to interact with the world, ya know?”

“I don’t want any trouble. Please.” I looked at him with begging eyes. “I just got here. I just want to live my life and graduate, and then be done with this. Please.”

“Is that a no?” He leaned in closer until we were inches apart. His eyes were an icy blue that stared at me with conviction and intensity. It was like a staring contest with a Siberian Husky. I couldn’t look away. “Do you know what happens if you say no, pipsqueak? Don’t you know what I could do to you? Your family would have to identify you by your dental records, get it? I own this town. No one’s about to call the cops on someone with enough connections to keep myself heading straight for college. My dad’s not about to let his star son rot away in prison.” I don’t know what my father had been saying when he told me to face them head on like a man. There was no way I could ever fight a monster like him.

“Who’s that?” The voice from behind him seemed to break up the tension, and Peter leaned back to glare at his lackey.

“What are you talking about?” He demanded as he let go of my shoulder.

“The girl.” Taking several steps back from that intense glare, I nearly fell over Calce behind me. She stopped me with one hand on the small of my back that was surprisingly warm in the cold air, and looked back to see her watching Peter with the same predatory smirk he’d sported only moments before.

“Oh, is this another one of your cousins?” Peter didn’t seem to notice the way she looked at him and took the time to move closer, trying to close the gap between us that I had tried to create. But she side stepped in front of my and met up with him instead, looking up at the man that towered over her with all the confidence in the world.

“No,” she said simply. I didn’t say a word. I was shell-shocked again, forced to stay still as Calce looked down at one of the most dangerous people in the entire town. A redneck turned gangster the moment he’d seen a movie or two he liked, with a father of high enough importance hiding him away from the world. It was the perfect recipe for him, if this were a world without the supernatural. But now I was worried for his safety.

“Oh, then what are you. You’re not his girlfriend, are you? He doesn’t really seem like the type for fall for goth chicks.”

“You talk a lot,” she said dangerously, like a snake coiled and ready to strike. But he just laughed as he leaned in closer. I clenched my fists. If she smiled, he’d see very quickly that those red eyes he must have thought were contacts matched up with shark teeth in rows that could rip him apart if she so wished. And I was guessing that was what she was wishing right about now.

“Calce, don’t-“

“Aw, look at this, is the baby clenching his fists?” Peter interrupted with guffaw. He barely glanced at me with an air of arrogance he shouldn’t have had. He grinned at her. “Hey, you know, you’re pretty cute for a pipsqueak. Why don’t you come hang out with us? You look like you know how to have a good time. Where you from, the city? I know a few guys from there.” She growled as his attempts at flirting. It was off, unearthly and strange to my ears. Tinny, almost. It set my teeth on edge, and I wasn’t the only one. A few of Peter’s goons were starting to look apprehensive at the way that the girl didn’t give the man an inch with the way he invaded her personal space, even with the size of him dwarfing her in comparison. But still, it seemed the guy in question wouldn’t take his eyes off the prize. Which apparently was taking my pseudo girlfriend away from me.

“Well she obviously isn't your girlfriend since you aren’t even crying at the way she’s looking at me,” He concluded with a grin. “So I guess you wouldn’t mind if I took her for a spin. You wouldn’t mind it, would you, sweetheart?” He lay a hand on her arm.

I watched it happen in snapshots. Her eyes flew from where he had touched her, then to his face, and it took him just a moment too long to realize he’d pushed his luck. The punch connected with his jaw and I saw teeth fly as he careened off to the side with a groan, his hands moving up to protect that jaw of his far too late. Her lips pulled back in a gritted grimace as she pulled up a leg to kick him in the groin before he could fall to the floor, and screamed out in surprise and pain at how quick the jab had been.

He fell, and the rest of us were left to stare at the man with the gun gripping his junk and moaning out with half his teeth spat out in front of him against the gravel road.

“Kill… Kill em.” His voice was weak, but it had gotten the point across. However the rest of his friends took a while to get back the bravado they had lost so quickly and it looked like no one wanted to be the one to throw the second punch.

“What are you, cowards?” Calce hissed as gripped her hand tighter in its balled up fist. “Come on, let’s see if you can fight.” Her grin widened and the teeth did its job. First one of them splintered off from the group and the rest were quick to follow, running as fast as they could with their tails between their legs. As they disappeared around the corner of the block, she turned back around with her eyes light up towards the sight of Peter.

“He threatened you,” She looked to me with her eyes burning like coals. I swore I could see something shimmering behind her like the air was heated even in the cold air of the fall day. They moved with her as she walked towards Peter with steady steps. He jumped when he saw her approach and moved quickly despite the pain as he fumbled for whatever was in his sweater pocket; I took a step back.

“Calce, what are you doing?” I demanded.

“Fuck you.” Peter spat at her as he dragged himself to his feet with the glint of his revolver’s handle appearing as he pawed it out. But she gripped his neck and pulled him against her in a split second. The way she held his hand behind his back was awkward at best. He cried out as she bent it back further, and I winced at the crack that echoed around us with his hand now hanging uselessly at his side. I almost screamed at her to stop, but he kicked at her and she took a good hit to the pelvis herself. She let out a dull groan, but it wasn’t enough to have her let go. In fact, it just seemed to make her angrier.

Her mouth widened as she separated those rows of teeth to show a maw like that of a snake, then bite down into his neck. I choked out a sob at the ripping sound accompanying a sickly wet dripping as she pulled out half of it almost slowly, digging in with her teeth as it shredded every piece of skin it came in contact with. The teeth were like individual needles attached to a mouth that nearly groaned with pleasure when it came in contact with him, even as he let out a gurgling scream.

  
“Calce…” I whispered, and fell to my knees. Her eyes flicked up to me, but her focus was on consuming as much blood as she could. I wondered how no one seemed to notice what she was doing, why no one called out or screamed. The surreal experience of seeing this was driving my mind to shambles. I could only watch as she drank in the blood of the guy who had been accosting me moments ago, now just a doll and little more than food for her.

“I need to eat, Andrew,” she said around a bit of muscle tissue. She dug in further, drinking in the taste of the artery she’d bit into. Her tongue lapped at one of the holes she’d made through her teeth ripping apart at it and I realized that what she was drinking from was the other side of the trachea. She’d been so far through the neck that his head was lolled sightlessly to the side, held on with little more than skin tissue and ravaged meat that had once been a heavy set neck. There wasn’t any screaming anymore. It was just the gurgling sound of blood dripping from one end of the neck down to the other.

It was too much. I crawled over to the side of the road, and let my guts do the rest. The sickening echoes of her teeth grinding and cutting through the gristle of a human being was too much on me. I felt faint as the apple and toast from this morning left my system in minutes, and even after I was still dry heaving and covering my ears trying not to listen to what my familiar was doing. I didn’t want her to be mine anymore. I couldn’t hide from what she was anymore, now that I had seen this. She was a killer, a monster. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a good person. She’d killed him.

“Andrew…” I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I pushed it away from me. That uncovered my ear briefly, and I could hear that she had finished what she was doing. But it didn’t matter. It only took one glance to my left to see the visceral remains of Peter Michaels with his head nearly decapitated and only oozing blood as she’d nearly drained him of all he had.

“No…” I whimpered. “Don’t touch me.”

“Andrew,” She murmured again. It was almost sensual, but I could tell she meant for it to be comforting. It was difficult for her to try that. The way she fumbled around my shoulders to hug me was alien and awkward for her. But the warmth moved through me, and the nausea started to pass. She was so, so warm. It was almost unbearable.

“You killed that guy,” I whimpered and fell back against her. I couldn’t stop shivering, but her warmth helped at least a little.

“Yeah. I did. He was going to kill you, I could feel it.” She pressed her head against the crook of my neck.

“You don’t know that,” I protested meekly. “He could have just been threatening all of that. We don’t even know that he killed anyone. You just… You tore out his throat. What was that? It was like… It was terrifying, I don’t even know what I saw!”

“It’s a part of who I am.” She sighed. “I understand that was probably scarring, but you summoned me. This is what I am.”

“A demon,” I said. “An actual demon. As bad as all of those web pages say.” She gripped my shoulders, and I flinched.

“I’m only that to those that aim to harm you. I won’t do it again if this is your reaction – at least, not without your call. Okay?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again,” I whispered breathily, but hobbled up to my feet all the same. She wasn’t wrong. I wanted to protest, but that would have had a good ending if I was alone. I knew what they were capable of, and had the bruises and cuts to prove it. But having the leader of them all meet me here, that was far worse than anything that happened before. She had probably saved my life. It wouldn’t be the first time some kid ended up in a hospital because of them, or worse. But still, what she had down echoed in my head. I don’t think I would ever forget it. “Calce.” I looked back at her, still pale as I wiped my mouth, then smiled weakly. “We’re going to be late for class.”


	4. A Quiet Mental Breakdown at School

“Oh shit,” She kicked at the pebbles by the side of the road. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault,” I laughed softly as my shoulders sagged. There were stinging tears at the edges of my eyes. “I’ll put this down as an extenuating circumstance. But I’ll have a spot on my permanent record for it.” She grinned. I might have imagined it, but she seemed to look almost worried for me behind that toothy smile. She seemed to care about me more than she let on. I wondered why.

“What a terrible thought.” She nodded her head solemnly, then looked back over at the body I was trying hard not to keep in my sight. “We should leave. This place might be a ghost town for now, but it won’t be forever.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to miss him,” Rubbing my arm, I turned back towards the school and started marching, determined to get that thing as far away from me as possible. “Someone will just assume that he picked the wrong fight. They wouldn’t be wrong.”

“What about that dad he was talking about?” She caught up easily to me and matched my speed without breaking a sweat. “Don’t you think he’ll be angry?”

“Do you think anyone is going to believe that I did all of that myself? At worst, they’ll blame it on a girl at least a foot shorter than him and will never be able to find you. You could just wait it out the whole time. I don’t… I don’t think the police are equipped to deal with things like you.” I looked away sheepishly from the eyes boring into the back of my head.

“Thing?”

“You know, demon,” I muttered.

“Well,” she sighed. “You don’t have to be so clinical about it. I’m still here for you. You can call me a she.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?” I looked back at her.

“A she.”

She stuck out her tongue at me. “I just killed a guy and you wanna know if I got a dick or not? I really am a girl, dumbass.”

“No- I didn’t mean it like that, I-I-“

“Don’t worry about it.” She rolled her eyes and folded her arms behind her head as we continued walking. “I’ve always been a girl. That’s all you need to know. I’m not the kind of demon that doesn’t have an exclusive form.” I wanted to pursue that branch of conversation, just like I seemed to with everything she said. She was helping out a kind of curiosity I was becoming more and more acquainted with. There was so much about her and about this entire side of the world I didn’t know. And after learning so much about the normal world that I’d lived in my whole life that it had become boring to me, she just always seemed to leave me wanting more. Not even seeing her kill someone calmed it.

I got her to change back to her bat form a minute away from the school, and walked through the doors soon after feeling even stranger and out of place than usual. Every tiny movement had me jumping. Every time someone walked through the hallway, I’d feel like I was being chased. With everyone already in class, it gave the whole place an eerie feeling like I was here in the middle of the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Um, are you o-o-okay?” I jumped as I saw a flash of movement. The girl in front of me seemed to jump away at the same moment in fear as I moved, and both of stared at each other for a second before we broke out in nervous laughter as we recognized each other. Opal pulled a few locks of sun kissed brown hair that had fallen out of place as she gripped her backpack tighter.

“Sorry,” I smiled nervously. “I’ve just been having kind of a freaky day.”

“Oh, I know the feeling.” She nodded empathetically. “I’m gu-guessing that’s why you’re late, r-r-right?” Her stutter made our conversations twice as long, but I still tried to be polite whenever I talked to the girl. There was always something odd and sad about her; I had no doubt she had her own problems with bullies.

“Yeah. Are you late too?” I motioned to her carefully looked after bag, which she clutched a little tighter. That was another thing I noticed about her. The clothes she wore were dull, and her bag looked old and well used. There was a sunken look that someone tight on cash seemed to carry about them, but I wasn’t about to ask questions. She nodded, and I looked back up to her. Her eyes always seemed averted from mine when we spoke. The first time had been endearing, but now after a few weeks, it just seemed strange.

“Yeah. We have an hour left of first period, though. We should get going.” I looked to the clock on the wall to confirm and cringed. I’d never been this late before and seeing it staring me in the face was hurting me in my soul.

“I’ll see you some other time, then.” I nodded at her but I was barely there in my head as I was already speeding off down the white halls in search of my classroom. I didn’t have the time to look through my locker and see if it was stuffed with paper balls like it had been the last few days. I could clean it out later. Although, the passing thought that perhaps they wouldn’t be there at all thanks to what had happened this morning filled with me with a bittersweet revulsion. Peter wasn’t going to hurt anyone anymore thanks to Calce and I. Well, mostly Calce. But at the same time, there was a man dead on the side of the road that police were going to find soon enough. I doubted they’d be able to trace it to me and even less likely to Calce with the way she’d done it, but… There was a guilt that hung over my shoulders. It was still a person.

I slipped into the classroom as quietly as I could, but I could still feel the teacher’s look borrowing into the back of my head as I took my seat near the front. I’d been so happy before to be up close next to the board where I wouldn’t have to further strain my eyes. It seemed like a world away that convincing my dad I needed glasses was the biggest problem in my life, as he saw them as a weakling signifier. I’d won that battle, but I’d still preferred the front with the teacher’s pet mentality I’d developed. But now sitting right at the front in front of a teacher glaring at me in a way I’d only ever seen second-hand was starting to make me question my decision to be up here. And that wasn’t even speaking for the feeling of people behind me staring and trying desperately to discern why the astute nerd was late.

But this was my first offense, and the teacher only took a moment to see my look of guilt and fear before she seemed to judge I was already punishing myself in my head for the terrible sin, and she moved on to the lesson she was already halfway through. I didn’t even listen, in all honesty. Whatever she was spouting about integers, it wasn’t something I couldn’t figure out later on my own.

The class was long and arduous, and my mind entirely unfocused on the matter. Occasionally, the shaking of my bag would bring me back to reality and I’d have to grit my teeth to stay quiet instead of telling Calce she was about to blow her own cover with her inability to keep still. In between that were flashes back to what she had done to Peter Michaels, but a pinch on my arm at that kept me from having an emotional breakdown in front of the entire class. The new kid suddenly screaming bloody murder in front of them would have been a little too obvious and a little too guilty.

It wasn’t until the break between classes that I had the chance to breathe, though the shock was still settling in my very being. I was like a zombie, the way I walked away from the classroom and through the hallway using only muscle memory to find my way to my locker. That’s probably why I barely noticed when the girl pushed her way in front of me. Her hand on my shoulder made me jump.

“Hey.” I looked up to see what to some might have looked like a mirror image. Sarah might have been my cousin, but we had such similar appearance and style that we could have been mistaken for twins. She had been one of the reasons my father had decided to move the family here. Hearing from his brother all the opportunities a small town had to offer, he’d just packed everyone and left. It wasn’t much of a blow for me with my own problems before and lack of friends, but I knew it had ben difficult on my mother and sister. Perhaps that was why Sam seemed to hate me more than usual lately. It must have been annoying for your younger brother not to care whether you lost your reputation or not.

“Hey,” Sara said again, and snapped her fingers in front of my face. “You okay, Andrew?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I don’t need your help. If anyone saw us together I’d probably just get teased more for it.” She snorted.

“Yeah, like I care if anyone is going to make fun of me for spending time with my cousin. I’m worried about you, you look pale. Did you even eat anything today?”

“Yeah. I don’t need you to be my mom,” I rolled my eyes and tried to fake some kind of bravado. “And you already have an established friend group. I’ve barely managed to grab a few misfits that seem to use me rather than like me.”

“God, stop your pity party, it’s grating on my nerves.” She re-shouldered her backpack and moved us to the side of the hall to keep from getting washed away in the river of students, turning away as she opened what I realized was her locker. It was still covered in party decorations from two weeks ago, and the sparkles of glitter fell from the inside door as it swung out. “You’re family, and I’m still going to be nice to you. Even if people still think I’m pitying you.”

“You are though.”

“That’s beside the point. Now, tell me why you’ve turned into a ghost today.”

I paused as I turned away in thought. I could tell her, but would she understand? Would she believe me? I supposed I did have the evidence to prove it, but even I was still desperately trying to wrap my head around the fact that I had a demon. Sara was like me, not religious like my family, so I didn’t have that to worry about. But what I did worry about her was her reaction. Would she be terrified? Scream? No, that wasn’t like her. The desperate need to tell someone wasn’t weighing on me yet, except maybe my friends. But she was still someone I could try to confide in eventually – and it wasn’t like my friends would actually have something to help me with. And perhaps getting ahead of that and not having to deal with the crushing information I couldn’t share would help my mental state. God knows it was already broken.

I opened my mouth to speak, but then the river seemed to open up and Opal appeared from the stream of quickly moving bodies. They were pretty close from what I’d gathered, but I would wager that Opal was just another pity friend that Sara surrounded herself with. It wasn’t out of ego or a need to have people make her feel better about herself. I believed it was more like Sara had this urge to gather people that needed her, and string them around her to give them the attention she thought they needed. I could see it in Opal; she was neurotic every time I met her and high strung to the nines. But she still had some ability to give back to Sara in the form of friendship, and that must have been one of the reasons it seemed mutual rather than one-sided.

“Hey Opal,” My cousin drawled as she leaned against the locker she’d been digging through moments ago. The other girl smiled tentatively as she walked over, and I grit my teeth at the inability to speak. Telling Sara would have to wait. “How was your class?”

“Oh, th-the u-u-usual.” She stuttered with a smile. “I-I-I was l-learning more a-about Shake-s-speare- and you w-wouldn’t believe wh-what happened with Drake and J-Juniper j-just now-“

I winced at the overactive stuttering and interrupted tactlessly, not wanting to waste anymore time than I had to. I didn’t have anywhere to go but this was urge in my stomach to move faster, quicker, and not spend time just chatting with people pretending to be my friends.

“I guess I’ll tell you later, Sara,” I mumbled, but before I could take more than a step she’d grabbed my arm again and wrenched it back.

“I think we’ll have to cut this gossip short, Opal. My rude cousin over here is having a conniption.” I winced. She wasn’t wrong. I was just at the end of my rope today.

“O-oh don’t w-wo-worry about it!” She smiled quickly “W-we can t-talk at l-l-lunch.” I was dragged away towards the nearest bathroom as Sara gave a quick goodbye over her shoulder and without much say in the matter. Being pulled around by my arm wasn’t the most pleasant with Sara’s level of strength, and being manhandled by her wasn’t helping my mood.

  
“Hey-“ I pulled away but it was too late; she’d already shoved me through the doors and into the girl’s washroom. “What are you doing? I shouldn’t be in here!” I tried to go past her, but she pushed me back by the shoulders and rested against the doors. My shoes scuffed against the squeaky linoleum floor as I stumbled back, not realizing how much strength she had in those arms that seemed to be as lanky as mine. There was a lot of muscle hidden away in there.

“No, we’re going to talk,” She growled. “You’re being ridiculous. This isn’t you, Andrew.”

“You don’t even know who I am,” I countered. “We’ve only known each other for like two weeks.”

“Okay, but I do know that no normal kid acts this way without having something seriously wrong with them. You look pale as a ghost, you know that?”

“Well, I… I…” I couldn’t find the words, and she just shook her head.

“You’re not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong. I promise, I won’t tell anyone, but you’re going to explode if you don’t say what’s on your mind. I can tell.”

“I… You know that… The cult thing, that Dean forced me into, right?” She cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“Okay, yeah, I know about that. What about it? Aren’t you sick of that by now?”

“Not exactly- I-I mean,” I scratched my head. “Maybe by now, yeah, but it’s… It’s a little late for that.”

“Late, what do you mean by late?” Her eyes widened. “Did your parents find out about it?”

“No, nothing like that…” God, I wish it had been that simple. “But… I kind of… Summoned… A thing. A… A demon.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then broke out into a chorus of laughter so loud that it set my teeth on edge in case anyone heard. This was still a public bathroom and there was a chance someone might come in.

"Yeah, sure,” she cried out through the tears. “Andrew, how crazy are you? Is this some kind of joke? Some kind of city thing, right? Or did your friends put you up to this? I mean, if so, I gotta hand it to you on the acting.” As she continued blabbering, I was already shrugging off my backpack to open it up with my shoulders shaking in nervousness and anger. Calce’s bat head poked out to see my cousin’s fit, but it took Sarah another moment before she opened her eyes to see her.

“What…” she wiped her eyes and blinked. “What is that?”

“Calce,” I growled. “This is what I was talking about. Are you done laughing at me?”

“You summoned a bat? With some kind of… Demon summoning circle thing? Sorry I don’t understand just how ridiculous your practical jokes can get. Maybe you were right, Andrew I really don’t know you-“

Calce’s bat form flew up to my side and in a flash, her human features were back as she planted both feet on the ground with crossed arms. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at the speechless girl.

Sarah looked similar to what I must have only a day before. Her eyes were nearly bulging out of her skull as she tried to understand what had just taken place. In an instant, what she could have played off as a practical joke just turned real. I knew the feeling of having your mind ripped apart at the seams.

“Don’t scream…” I muttered. “Please don’t scream.”

“I’m not going to scream,” she whispered. “But that was, like, not what I… Expected. I’m just trying to understand here. That wasn’t some kind of magic trick, right? You’re not shitting me, right? Right?”

“No, I promise!” I motioned to Calce. “This? This is completely real. And this is why I look like a ghost. This is what I’ve been hiding all today. Do you understand now?”

“Sorry I’m just kind of completely revaluating my worldview for the next five minutes I’m going to need a while. Are you sure you’re not just some sixteen-year-old girl or something?” She turned to Calce when she said that with a hollow voice, knowing that what she had just seen deep inside couldn’t have been an illusion.

“I’m as real as you or Andrew,” she growled, then bared her teeth for good measure. “See? Fangs. And this, too.” She held up a finger that flicked to emanate a small flame not unlike a lit matchstick. “I’m not entirely sure it was the best idea to tell you, though.” She turned to look at me with steely eyes, and I gulped.

“Look, I can’t just have this hidden away, okay? This isn’t normal – you aren’t a normal thing! Magic isn’t supposed to be real, or God, or the devil, or any of that stuff, but you’re right here and now I have nothing left to cling onto.”

“Yeah, seconded,” Sarah echoed. “You’re kind of an anomaly. I never even entertained the thought but now I’m wondering about pretty much everything I ever dismissed.”

Her reaction to all this told me I probably shouldn’t tell her about the incident that had happened before school. That weighed on me, but at least I had this I could show her. And despite everything, she was taking it surprisingly well. Maybe better than me. But she wasn’t the one that had summoned Calce so I guess she already had a leg up on me.

“Do your parents know about this?” She asked, then shook her head. “Sorry, stupid question. They’d probably burn you at the stake for something this insane. I mean, I already thought it was bad with the pastor’s son joining some stupid cult but this? Andrew, I underestimated the amount of shit you could get into.” I groaned.

“Please don’t remind me about my parents. You know what’s even worse? We have a contract – she can’t even leave my presence! We’re stuck together because she’s my… What is it, guardian?” I looked over at Calce, and she shrugged.

“Guardian, familiar, whichever. According to what you agreed to in the spell, you’re a practicing warlock, and I’m your helper of… Some kind. I’ve never done this thing before, so I don’t exactly know how it works other than some basic instinct that I can’t leave you and need to protect you.”

“So she’s like a bodyguard?” Sarah’s voice raised. “You got yourself a demonic bodyguard?”

  
“I didn’t exactly try to do that,” I groaned. “It just happened. Dean pulled me into this, it got worse from there, and now this is where I’m at. She’s… effective.” I winced and looked down, trying to get the images of the others out of my mind. What she had done. What she was capable of.

“Well I’d imagine, with what you showed me. I mean, at the price of what, your soul? You should be getting a good deal.”

“Don’t say it like that!” I cried. “I’m not actually going to lose my soul… Right Calce?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what’s going to happen, actually,” she said dryly, and I hung my head again with a shaking that returned in full swing. Or perhaps it never really left. “Hey, don’t be like that,” she continued. “We still have a long time before you gotta think about stuff like that. She’s right, I can be your bodyguard, and those guys that bugged you before don’t stand a chance.”

“Guys?” Sarah questioned. “What “guys”?”

“I…” I couldn’t find the words again.

“The people that picked on him,” Calce spoke up for me. “Real assholes. They got what was coming to them.”

“You mean that gang?” She raised an eyebrow. “Why would they be bothering you so soon after you moved? No offense, but you’re kind of a wallflower. I don’t understand how you’d stand out. Maybe your dad? Or that you moved here at all…” Sarah went deeper into thought, but I didn’t have time for her to be thinking about this. 

“I just wanted to tell you,” I sighed. “That this is what’s happening to me. This is why I was acting that way. Because I just found out about this and I can barely handle it and lately I’ve been feeling like I’m coming apart at the seams and it’s kind of killing me inside.”

“Well yeah, Andrew, demons exist and you’re pretty much literally attached to one. I can see why you’d be going crazy.”

  
“I just wanted to make sure you could see her too and this isn’t some fevered hallucination.” I paused. “It still might be. Maybe I’m in a coma.”

  
“That’s dumb.” Calce turned to me. “You’re dumb.”

  
“It’s not dumb!” I growled. “It’s a very real possibility! I’m trying to apply logic here to a situation where there is none and it’s very difficult. I’m not a person who would normally entertain this kind of thing.”

“If there’s one thing I can say about a silver lining, it’s that she’ll keep those bullies off of you.” Sarah scratched her head. “I didn’t realize you’d be such a target – I mean, I’d been looking after you as much as I could, but really? You’re getting mixed up in that kind of stuff and it’s only been like what, a month?”

  
“Are you blaming me for people targeting me?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” She sighed. “It’s just… Man, I’m trying to give you something positive to think about with your head going all wonky. Putting things in perspective, as crazy as they are right now. I don’t really know what else to say here. What do you want me to do?”

“I guess… You already did it, kind of. Listened. Didn’t run away screaming. I appreciate that.”

“I am kind of terrifying,” Calce mussed. “I know I don’t look normal, and I know my existence is very abnormal. You’re doing well.”

“She didn’t have to see you crawling out of the ground as a skeleton and ruining my mother’s hardwood floors!” I hissed, but she just shrugged again. This time I caught a slight smirk, and turned away quickly at the strange twinge in my stomach back to my cousin.

“Did you tell your friends about her yet?” She asked.

“No, not yet. They were there when things started to get hairy, but they ran away before anything else could happen. I was planning on telling them after school…”

“Just be careful about who you tell.” Sarah looked at me seriously and began to walk over until she had her hand on my shoulder and I was getting just a little stuffy at the close contact. “This kind of thing is insane. This is the level of stuff that the government gets involved in. If this was normal, I’m pretty sure we’d see stuff like this on the internet. But it’s not, and no one believes in it, and you could get caught in the crossfire. You might be kind of a sad person, but you’re still my cousin. Family, however important that is to you.”

“I’m not about to tell the nearest teacher,” I rolled my eyes and shrugged her off. “Calce can hide as a bat in my backpack, since she can’t leave my side from that damned spell. But I’m careful. If I can hide doing black magic behind my parent’s back, then I think I can hide this. A least for a little while. I’ll… I’ll find a way to deal with this in the long run. I just have to think on it.”

“Okay-“ The bell rang to cut her off, and she bit her lip. “Get to class, don’t bring attention to yourself. And if you have anything you gotta tell me, just grab me and I’ll listen. After this, I’m not sure there’s much else that can freak me out.” I nodded and she walked past me out the doors and back into the thrall of students. Calce and I were left alone, staring at each other to take in what had just happened.

“That went better than I thought it would.” I smiled meekly. “She didn’t scream. I was expecting a scream.”

“Yeah, she’s less high strung than you,” Calce grinned. “Kind of a bitch, though. You’re a real beast of burden to her.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m not a burden to you either,” I sighed. “You get out of hell and now you’re stuck to me the whole time. Though, maybe having something as dangerous as you being attached to me and following my orders instead of going off on a rampage isn’t a bad idea –“

“Well, I’d hate to ruin your train of thought, summoner, but if you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the girl’s washroom and that girl did say you should get to class on time.”

“She’s my cousin, name’s Sarah and oh shit you’re probably right.” I groaned. “Get in the bag before we get caught.”

“Oh thanks,” she rolled her eyes but there was an amused smirk on her face despite the sarcasm. “So polite.” I shouldered the backpack once bat Calce had entered it squished like a ball between the textbooks and inside lining and zipped it up until she was no longer seen.

  
“Just, please don’t cause a scene during classes, and we should be fine.”


	5. Hello my Name is Demon Nice to Meet You

I spent the rest of the day with that weight still on my shoulders, and the occasional squeaks from my backpack didn’t help. If it wasn’t for the memories of what she’d done before, I’d almost find it funny. Getting called on to answer a question only to have a chew toy make a squealing noise in response was nerve-wracking. Somehow though, the ridiculous nature of it, almost made me smile. In between all of my fears, all of the things I didn’t want to think about, about blood and gristle and bone and monsters, there was a little bat in my backpack. Perhaps I was going insane, thinking a demon of all things could be cute, in any way. She didn’t appear to make them on purpose. I supposed the bat form of hers came with its own instincts. It led me to wondering more about her. The idea of studying her turned itself over in my mind, in between the constant nagging logic that I should be getting rid of the creature as soon as possible. Maybe she could be useful, if I didn’t have that crime pinned on me. I doubted they’d go to the police, or even find a way to explain how I had been the one to leave Peter like that. If I found a way to reign her in, if she listened to me, then all I had to do was order her.

The rest of the day went by uneventfully, but I couldn’t seem to find Dean and the other two no matter how hard I looked around the lunch room. I ended up starting on my march home alone and quiet. Fear still prickled the back of my neck. The thought of a monster hiding in my backpack was sobering, even one that listened to me.

“I wonder if they just didn’t come to school today,” I said to Calce once we were far enough away from the school that it wouldn’t look strange of me to talk to a backpack. “Do you think something happened to them?” After a small pause, there was another squeak from my backpack, and I smiled to myself. It wasn’t an answer I understood, but it helped remind me I wasn’t alone, but then my face dropped. I shouldn’t be happy about a demon, and I had my friends. I already wasn’t alone.

“Hey, Andrew, wait up!” I jumped at the voice and turned abruptly on my heels. Raymond was running in the lead with his skateboard tied to his backpack, with the other two close behind. They exited the school through the side doors, so I heard them more than saw them first.

“Where were you guys?” I called out. The pebbles under my feet fell into the gutter as I stopped walking to wait from them underneath one of the maple trees lining the side path that meandered towards my house. Staring into the puddle of water, I could feel a greater weight on my shoulders. I had been about to go the long way home since the other one still had evidence of a murder. I didn’t want to return to see police everywhere. They could have probably smelt the guilt rolling off me. It wasn’t my fault, it was hers. I couldn’t explain that to them, but I shouldn’t have felt guilty for it. I couldn’t help it.

“Sorry, my fault.” Jesse caught up with his hand reached out, more out of breath than the others. “I got overworked by the student council for one of the events and I needed as many people as I could grab.”

“You could have asked me too, couldn’t you?”

“Oh, well,” He breathed out deeply, caught his breath, then smiled one of his winning grins reserved for getting into the teacher’s good graces. “I didn’t want to interrupt your classes. I know how much you like to study.”

“Plus, I saw you in the hall before,” Ray added. “You didn’t look like you wanted to talk. You were busy with some girls, or something.” He shrugged. They sounded like excuses not to talk with me, but I decided not to call them on it. I suppose they had their reasons, I lied to myself. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have anyone. Right now, I didn’t like the idea of being alone. 

“Well…” I began, then glanced at the school. Too close. “I have something to show you guys, but it’s got to be out of sight. Can we head into the woods a bit?”

“Something to show us?” Dean watched me carefully. “It’s… It’s not related to before, is it?”

“Just follow me,” I murmured, and started heading past the houses and down the road to the edge of the forest. Ridgeden was a small town, an island in a sea of trees as far as the eye could see. The northern forest up here was massive. Even just looking into the treeline after getting to the edge, all one could see were the dark limbs of thousands of trunks and leaves reaching up to a canopy that let little light in to the forest floor below, with no breathing room in sight. No clearings, just endless forest. It was almost suffocating. I didn’t like the way it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Between the disappearances, the rumors, and the thought of getting lost, I was almost regretting bringing them here.

“So, what is it?” Raymond questioned in a wary tone. Leaning up against the tree, his eyes darted constantly from the deeper forest to the safety of the road. He disliked this as much as I did. The dead end was nothing but gravel and even I was feeling something in the pit of my stomach worsen the longer I was away from the main part of town. The others didn’t seem to care, though. Jesse was watching me easily, never once betraying his feelings. And Dean just look excited.

I took a deep breath, but even that wouldn’t stop the shaking in my hands. “Promise you guys won’t scream,” I cautioned.

“We’re not cowards, dude,” Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on, you know me, would I scream?”

My nose wrinkled. “You ran away before when that thing happened at my house.” He flinched, but tried to recover with a wide and overbearing grin.

“Hey, Andrew, that was just some weird trick of the light or something with the candles, right?” Raymond interrupted. He smiled nervously, like there was a joke he was missing. “It’s not like that… actually happened, right?” He chuckled. “I mean, it seems stupid to be afraid of a trick of the light now, but you shouldn’t get mad at us when it’s not like anything happened.”

“… Just don’t scream.” I repeated. He paled, and I went to open my backpack. Calce was already there near the top, blinking up expectantly as I pulled her out. She gripped my arm with her large wings, her ears flitting in every direction at the no longer muffled noises of the forest. Her face was admittedly cute when she looked up at me. I brought her safely into my arms, then turned back to face the others.

“Okay, this is going to seem really fucking weird,” I said. “But this is a demon.”

There was silence for a minute before Dean spoke up.

“What are you on, Andrew?”

“No, no I’m serious,” I insisted. “Just a second. Calce?”

I let go of her and she flew up into the air beside me somewhat awkwardly, coupled with an annoyed squeak at the sudden throw. The transformation was the same as before. The novelty was already starting to wear off for me, leaving only a dull turn of my stomach at the macabre twisting of limbs that existed for such a minuscule moment that if you blinked, you’d miss it. But the others were speechless as they took in what had been a bat only a second ago.

Calce was the same as always, watching with an amused smirk as Raymond’s eyes bugged out and Jesse dropped his precious bag he always kept spotless onto the forest floor. Dean couldn’t look away. None of them could speak, and I think I could hear Raymond choking. I’d almost feel smug, if I wasn’t so afraid.

“This is Calce.” I gestured to her. “She’s what we summoned, together. When you left, she came out of the floor, and I completed the spell.” I paused, taking another breath. “She’s now my guardian, like a familiar or something. I don’t know what to do. I don’t really know anything about this. I thought… Maybe you guys… I don’t know.” 

“Dude…” Dean whispered.

“What?”

“DUDE!” This time it was a yell as he ran up to Calce, shoving both Raymond and Jesse to the side in the process. His eyes were lit up with a winning smile that didn’t seem to change even when she took several steps back, her slitted eyes flicking over his form. I bit my lip, halfway from telling him to run.

“Okay, that’s enough, weirdo,” she growled. “I don’t want groupies trying things on.”

“C-careful,” I began, but Dean waved me off with a dismissive hand.

“But, you’re… You’re a demon that is literally the coolest thing in the world! That’s just so… So… I’m Dead. I mean Dean. N-not dead- but I’ll be anything you want honestly this is the most wicked shit I’ve ever seen in my life.” He slicked back his hair with one hand as he held out the other for her to shake, that same grin still on his face. His eyes were lit up like bright stars. She stared at him with the edge of her lip curled in a snarl.

“I’m not shaking that.”

“Dean, please, I don’t think you should get too close,” I tentatively moved closer. “She’s dangerous. Calce, please don’t hurt him. He’s a friend, okay? Just play nice, and I think I’ll… I’ll go reboot Jesse.” I left them there with a nervousness still eating away at me, and turned to the other two. Jesse’s face was as pale as chalk, his entire body fixed in a statuesque terror. I almost reached out to touch him, but let my hand fall when he flinched away.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I didn’t ever think… I didn’t ever… I didn’t believe any of this was real.” He picked his words carefully, one at a time and very slowly. His eyes were still bugged and staring at Calce right by me. “What I just saw was impossible. Completely impossible. This isn’t real.”

“I know,” I sighed. “That was me too. I still don’t know how to feel. The thought takes getting used to.” I held up a shaking hand to show him. “I know how you feel.” He didn’t look down. His eyes were fixed on Calce.

I looked over to Raymond, who had squatted down a few feet away. His head was in his hands, muttering something to himself I couldn’t hear. I tentatively crouched beside him. He jumped at the movement out of the corner of his eye, then sighed when he realized it was me.

“God, man,” Ray sighed as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done that shit. You realize the kind of stuff has to be real now that this is real? Like, God and shit. I should go to church. I’m fucked. All of us are fucked.”

“I… I understand,” I began, but he went back to muttering with his eyes too far away to be looking at the ground. “It’s not the worst thing, right?” I tried to reason. “It’s not like you’re going to hell because of one thing. You’re not connected to her, or m-maybe just because one thing is real, doesn’t mean it all is. W-well, I mean… You’re not tied like I am, so it’s not like…” I trailed off when I realized I was rambling to try and assuage my own fears. I was connected to her. I was the one going to Hell. Of course it was real. It was all real. We were all doomed. We were going to die and end up in eternal damnation because of a monster. Maybe they’d be safe. But me, I was… Doomed.

“What the fuck, Andrew?!” I felt Jesse’s grab my shoulder from behind, turning me abruptly to face him as he pulled me up. His eyes were wild, with his breath coming in hyperventilating pants. “Tied to that thing? Is THAT what you meant by familiar? I didn’t even understand what we were trying to do when we did it, but now I know we should never have gotten into this in the first place. I can’t go to hell! My grandma’s Catholic, we’ll exorcise her or something, I don’t know! But this- this is crazy!”

“Well I don’t know exactly how else to do this, you know!” I pulled away. I couldn’t let myself get caught up in his hysteria. I had to be the logical one here. That was my job. “I didn’t even realize I was signing my soul away when I tied myself to her, I just did what she asked. She was stuck in there too and just wanted to escape.” I winced after that. It sounded far too sympathetic. He wasn’t the only one that was beginning to think I made a mistake summoning her. 

“You listened to that thing!?” Raymond’s voice was sharp as he stood up. He looked haunted. “Why the hell would you do that? It doesn’t even look human like this, she looks like… like… like I don’t even know man, but you should have run the fuck away like us if you had half the brains we thought you did!”

“I didn’t even know what to do, I was scared, I just wanted to help. And besides, she’s…” I thought back to what she’d done to Peter Michaels and paled.

“What?” Raymond stood up. “What is she?”

“Useful?” I squeaked. Murdered. I’d never be blamed, I’d never have to deal with the gang, and the town would be better off for it. We wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore. No matter how I looked at it, what she had done… It wasn’t entirely bad. I didn’t want to dwell on it.

“Anyways.” Jesse’s demeanour seemed to change about face in less than a second. He was already picking up his bag and acting haughty again, but he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, and there was a shiver in his voice.

“What do you mean, “anyways”?” I tilted my head, looking at him as he started to walk away. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, but there was something off about him. That subtle shake in his voice I recognized in my own. “I’m done with this. I can’t have myself connected to this. I don’t want to deal with demons.”

“You’re just leaving like that?” I asked. I knew this would happen, but it didn’t make it any better. I needed allies, people to rely on. Of course Jesse would bow out as soon as he knew about this. I couldn’t blame him, but still…

“I can’t, Andrew.” His hand shook slightly, his grip on his backpack weak. “But you need to tell that guy, Jack. He’s supposed to be in charge of all of this, right? That’s where we got the book from. We need to tell him something like this happened, and maybe he has some knowledge of his own about it. I thought he was just some psycho quack before, but now… He may just be the best person to ask about this. But I can’t do this.”

“Me neither,” Raymond broke in.

“Ray, come on,” I begged. “We can’t do this alone. I can’t just deal with this myself.”

“What reason do I have to stay?”

“We… We’d get some kind of parade for this, right?” I smiled tentatively. “You realize what kind of good we’d get in with the frat?”

“Sure, a parade,” Raymond’s tone was bitter. “This is totally the kind of thing I want my name on.”

“That’s what you signed up for,” I argued.

“I signed up for a fun time, and a stupid way of wasting away with the hours, because there’s no good skate-parks for me to zone out in. I didn’t sign up for any of this actually working.” Even still, he seemed to be thinking about it. Even Jesse had stopped, though his hands were still shaking.

“This is the kind of thing they were working towards,” I continued, trying to ignore the waver in my own speech. “Asking demons for power, or wealth. Maybe we could actually get something out of this.” I was convincing myself as much as them. My parent’s religion kept swaying in my mind, reminding me over and over that this wasn’t something to mess with. 

“Did you ask her for power, yet? Or wealth?” Jesse taunted. “Are you going to follow along with whatever she whispers in your ear? Are you going to play that fucking game?”

“I didn’t take you for such a religious zealot.” I glared at him, and he flinched away.

“There weren’t demons in this world a few minutes ago. Now I don’t know what to think. Your father’s the pastor. You should know more than any of us, that this is a terrible idea.”

“It’s not like that.” I sighed. I suddenly felt so tired. “My dad’s an asshole, and this isn’t going to make me agree with him. We should tell the frat about this. Maybe not for prestige, but they’d know what to do. Maybe even find a way to get rid of this, if that’s what you really want to do. I’m not even sure.” I wasn’t sure how much I wanted that. Beneath all this fear, and the constant flashes back to what she was capable of, I kept thinking of what she could mean. What I could study. “Jack might have an answer. I’m not asking you to force yourselves to stay in this.” I looked at the two of them earnestly. “I’m asking you to just sit tight and wait until we figure things out, okay?” We needed to tell Dean’s brother, get in contact with Jack, and get answers. They were the only ones that believed in this, so they must have known something more.

This was supposed to be a game. Just a game. We’d fucked it all up, but that didn’t mean it was salvageable.

“Well…” Raymond’s shoulders shook, then sagged. “He’d know, wouldn’t he.”

“Only once,” Jesse spat. “We get whatever we can glean from them, then that’s it. I’m done. I’m only here for class work and ways to waste time, and this isn’t that.”

“Maybe tell that to Casanova over there,” Raymond nodded to the two behind us. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about intending to keep her or some shit, Andrew. But Dean? He’s got a fucking screw loose.”

“What?” I glanced back, then groaned to myself. Out of all the reactions I expected from them, flirtation wasn’t one of them. But I supposed Dean would have done the same to her that he did with every girl that wore black within a square mile of us. He was the most idealistic of all of us. Raymond didn’t want the drama, and Jesse had his own latent religion to deal with, but Dean had nothing holding him back. 

“We should break that up,” I ventured, looking back to them, but they both shook their heads quickly.

“That’s not my fight,” Raymond said. “I’m not getting near that thing.”

“She’s not going to bring you down to hell with her just by being around her.” I rolled my eyes, then hesitated. “I mean, I think.” I looked back to Calce, biting my lip. Dean had slowly pushed her closer into a nook between two trees, and my heart beat faster as he moved closer with every half step. He didn’t see it, but I did. Her fists were clenched, getting into a tighter and tighter grip, her eyes darting from his eyes to his throat in a way I supposed he thought was want. But I knew what she actually wanted.

“I’m not sure I can end that by myself,” I muttered. 

“No, no,” Jesse said dryly. “Let him get eaten by a literal demon. He’d probably get off to it. Fuck, I need to get a cross.” He clicked his tongue. “I’m surprised he hasn’t killed himself through self flagellation yet.”

“Dean?” I called out tentatively, but he was far too invested to hear me. Calce pricked up at my voice and looked over at me. Her eyes were pleading. I gulped, shaking my head quickly. She frowned, then turned back to glaring at Dean. He’d finally backed her into a tree and was far too close for comfort.

“What other kind of powers do you have?” The goth drawled. “I’m kind of a dark soul myself, but those red eyes are pretty hot. I don’t think I could even get that shade with contacts. So pretty.”

“Dean-“ This time I’d walked up beside him, and tentatively grabbed the corner of his jacket. “She’s not interested.”

“You jealous, Andy?” He grinned back at me. “Maybe the frat’ll know how to get rid of this familiar of yours, so you can stick her on me. I’d be fine with that.” He looked back at her with a charming smile. “I don’t know about these other cry babies, but I’d be more than happy to have dealings with demons.”

“Dean,” I sighed impatiently. He wasn’t going to listen to anything I said, I could see it in the way he only half spoke to me, constantly glancing back to Calce. “You’re not going to get anywhere and you’re being stupid right now. You don’t even know what she’s capable of. You haven’t seen-”

“No? But I want to learn.” I grabbed him tighter by the jacket with a huff, but paused when he growled. He was stronger than I thought, I realized, as he shoved me back with a swat of his arm. Even as lanky as he was, he sent me off kilter, sprawling back and landing against the soft undergrowth. The fallen maple leaves gave me more than enough cushion, but when I sat back up to say something, I realized that it didn’t matter.

Dean’s shoes dangled listlessly against the ground, swaying back and forth from the pendulum of his neck. The demon had picked him up by the collar of his shirt, her eyes watching him with a calm luminous intensity as she stared him down. “You know, you’re kind of a fucking asshole,” she said offhandedly.

“I… Get that a lot,” he choked out, then shined a pained grin. Her nose wrinkled in a wordless snarl. The force of her throw sent him past all of us, sending him into one of the trees behind us with a muffled thud. Groaning, he slowly began to pick himself up from the ground.

“I’m so not into this,” Raymond muttered.

“The hell did you expect from me?” Calce growled, flexing her hands from the throw. “That asshole was flirting the whole time, and then he tries to punt my summoner away? I didn’t even hurt him.”

“Didn’t hurt him? Tell that to Dean, you monster,” Jesse quipped back as he ran over to help the guy who was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. The goth raised his head slowly to look at all of us, coughed, then grinned.

“She’s fucking awesome.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re not helping your case here,” Jesse sighed, patting Dean’s shoulder. “You’re a hot mess, aren’t you.”

“Seriously, SERIOUSLY not into this,” Raymond continued, but I ignored him as I stood up from the ground to swat the leaves off of me. He walked over to Jesse and Dean, the latter of which was already back to walking again, albeit with a limp. He grin was unchanging. It made my eye twitch. He was too happy at this. Perhaps he should have been the one to stay and deal with this, instead of me. But then, I didn’t think he and Calce would last more than a day. I wasn’t sure how I had lasted as long as I did, myself.

"So, if I'm going to tell Jack, when should I do it?" Dean asked breathlessly.

“You heard?” I blinked.

“I’m not a complete idiot,” he retorted, straightening himself out. “The frat’s having a party tomorrow. Passed their exams, so they’re celebrating. Corey wouldn’t tell me the details, ‘course, but I know enough that it’s gonna be a big one.” I didn’t the way he smiled.

“Should we really crash a party?” I asked. “Maybe it would be better to just reveal to Corey, and then get him to talk to Jack.”

“Are you kidding? A party is the best way to reveal something like this. This is history in the making, Andy. You finally did something right, here, and it was because of all of us. Granted, we ran. Pretty shitty, I guess, and dumb on my part for not meeting the girl of my dreams – but still. You’re not wound like a clockwork anymore, and that’s awesome. I picture we go in, guns blazing, all black and hot as hell, show off our demon here. Get them all wide-eyed and terrified, and then we’re golden. Jack will love us, and that cult of his? We’ll be right there, at the front of it all. Screw Corey, that asshole would just take credit for it anyways.”

Raymond and Jesse’s expressions reflected how I felt. Both shared a look, then Jesse let go of Dean with little elegance, forcing to stand alone. “I’m not sure about that,” Jesse said faintly. He sounded hollow.

“It’s fool-proof,” Dean insisted, completely oblivious to either of them. He was uncertain on his feet, but still determined, a bright smile that was so out of place with the mood. He used a tree to rub the dirt out of his shoes, but he didn’t seem to realize all of the tears in his jacket from the shove against the tree. “I promise it’ll be great. Just, everyone show up at the party. It’s at their house. Tomorrow, at eight.”

“I don’t know, I’d be up for a party,” Calce grinned thoughtfully, stepping up beside me. Raymond and Jesse took a step back, but Dean once again seemed ignorant to their fear. Dean’s grin widened, pausing in his cleaning, and she rolled her eyes. “Not for you.”

“Having you agree with me is more than enough,” he crooned. “See, Andy? Even your demon agrees.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s been in hell so long that she would agree to anything that involves interaction with people,” I argued as I glanced between the two of them hesitantly. I was starting to feel pinned in. “And I’m not entirely certain that’s the best idea. What if she…” I glanced back at her, and resisted taking a step back along with Raymond and Jesse. Her eyes glinted at me with a toothy smile that showed her fangs. “She’s dangerous.” I didn’t want to scare them further with what she fed off of, or what she could do if she really felt like she needed to protect me. “Plus, I have a curfew. My parents.”

“Screw your parents. Since when did you care about any of that shit?” Dean inclined his head with a grin. “Aren’t your curious about what a party is like? Or did you do any of that stuff in the city?”

“… No,” I admitted. I’d been little more than a shut in with my previous friends. Even though it hurt, getting uprooted, I hated to admit it had been too easy to leave my friends as nothing more than robots to message with online.

“Well, small town parties are the best. Full of rampant drinking, weed, sex, girls, everything you could ever want. At least, so I’ve heard.” He lolled his head towards the road we’d left. “Well, I’ll let you all decide, but I’m totally going. It’s up to you whether you actually show up with that demon of yours. But if you don’t, I’m taking credit for it. And I’m throwing the rest of you under the bus.” With that he left, leaving the rest of us to stand awkwardly at each other. It didn’t last, with only a look at Calce’s face Jesse was on the road after the goth, and Raymond quickly followed.


	6. Let's Just not Meet the Parents

The suffocation of the forest was fast to return, this time steadily growing as the sun began to set. I followed behind them silently, but then slipped to the side path along the outskirts of town while they continued to the main center of Ridgeden. Calce walked alongside me, both of us continuing in silence as I thought over what Dean proposed. On my left, the last stand of houses was the only thing between me and the forest. I could see the tops of the trees behind them, shining golden against the light of the sunset. As pretty as it was, I couldn’t suppress the shivers. I never liked the idea of living in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and everything around me was bordered by these trees that altogether made a forest that terrified me.

“What did you think of them?” I didn’t like the silence either. But breaking it in the midst of nothing but bird song and the wind felt almost worse. I looked over to Calce, and she smirked.

“Cowards and an idiot. About par for the course with humans.”

“Are you used to that sort of thing with them? Even Dean?”

“No, I guess that’s new.” She yawned, stretching out her arms with a small noise. “Usually they’re more religious clutching rosaries and begging for forgiveness, and not fantasizing about me. I’m not used to someone actually liking the fact that I’m a demon, or even having it turn them on. That just makes me feel gross.” She shuddered and stuck out her tongue, dropping her arms. “That Ray dude is probably the closest to not an ass, but Jesse made me want to punch him, and Dean made me want to kill him.”

I paled and shouldered my backpack a little tighter. “Don’t kill my friends, please.”

“Oh please,” she scoffed. “I’m kidding. I won’t kill them. They’re pretty terrible friends, though. Do you have anyone that’s not walking all over you around here, or am I going to have to fight all your battles?”

“Is… Isn’t it your job to fight all my battles?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I guess…” She glanced at me, then dropped her gaze and continued marching down the sidewalk. “But maybe not the battles that don’t involve actual fighting.” I let the conversation drop.

"Okay,” I eventually spoke up again as I started to recognize the buildings. This town was too small not to know where everything was within weeks of living here, and the carefully manicured lawns were incredibly easy to spot. “You need to change again, we’re almost home.”

"I don't want to,” she huffed, grinning sideways at me. “Maybe I'll just introduce myself to your family."

I rolled my eyes, pushing my glasses up from the bridge of my nose. “Okay, that’s an even less funny joke than before.” She shrugged.

“I don’t know, maybe not having to pretend I don’t exist would be better than making me a bat all the time. It’s too crowded in your backpack between all of the nerdy history books I’m pretty sure you don’t need.”

I shook my head emphatically, with a slightly shaky breath. “Calce, please. I’m begging – ordering, whatever it is I have to do. I don’t want you around my parents. I don’t even want them seeing you in passing. You said you knew about religious people. They’re just as bad. If not worse. You know what would happen if they interacted with you. I don’t want to come to pass, okay?”

“Relax! Fucking hell, are you always this tightly wound? Dean wasn’t wrong, as much as I hate to admit.” She gently punched my shoulder, but I still flinched at the touch. “Dude, don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.” She looked at me seriously. “That’s not my job, remember?”

“I keep… Peter,” I rubbed my temple. “I can’t get that out of my head.” She took my hand, and tenderly moved it off of my face. I paused in surprise at the sudden kind gesture, looking at her for any kind of joke behind it, but she watched me so seriously I was wondering if this was the same girl that seemed intent on pushing the boundaries of what was considered joking.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, not even that. Just… I’m worried if they’ll trace it back to me, or us. What you did was horrific, but at the same time…”

She grinned faintly, those shark teeth so prominent that I couldn’t breathe for a moment. “They’re not going to. They were obviously breaking some laws or other, so I doubt they’re in that great with the law.” She waited for me to nod, and I did hesitantly. “Good. So that means they’re not going to answer any questions, which just means there’s going to be another body mauled by some animal that came out of the deep dark forest. So that means you’re in the clear, and I’m still here, to protect you. That’s my job, Summoner.”

I tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. “Fine,” I sighed.

“Great.” She beamed. “Well there you go. Nothing to worry about. And if I’m hungry again, I’ll be more discreet.” She stood there, still smiling. Expectantly.

I paused. “That doesn’t mean you get to come home with me as a human, even if you did make me feel better.”

“Aw shit,” she sighed. “Fine, open the damn bag…” I glanced away when she transformed back into a bat, then helped her into the pack, and shouldered it before continuing my way home. I hated to admit it, but my heart did feel lighter. Raymond and Jesse both had me worked up, and Sarah’s ideas did leave me wondering what I should even be doing. Everyone was afraid of her. There was a good reason for it. Maybe I should have been more terrified. I’d seen the worst of her already, more than any of them. And yet, knowing she was in my backpack, feeling the extra weight of the flying fox that squealed occasionally… It wasn’t enough to think of her as a demon, to bring me back to the sobering reality anymore.

She’d helped me. I couldn’t say that about a lot of people I’d met.

….

The solution had to be homework, to get my mind off things. while I worked on trying to understand calculus, behind me Calce was just as furiously at work. She’d found the severely damaged football again, and like a dog that worried a chew toy for too long, she was back to throwing up the deflated thing in the air, watching it alter its fall from its deformities as it fell back to her. At first, I just listened to the sound of the poor pigskin being thrown up and down, but eventually I found myself watching with a slight smile on my face. I focused on her face more than the ball. A sense of boredom coupled with focus, as she tried to keep herself from having to reach for the thing every time it fell back to the bed she lay on. I caught myself chuckling, and quickly turned back to my work before she noticed.

But the focus on the numbers faded as I thought about her. A strange creature. I always thought demons would be brazenly evil, but she was anything but. Really, she seemed mildly immature, and quick to judge, but that was all. Perhaps bloodthirsty, and hungry. I could put that on her being in hell for too long. I kept excepting to see something from her that was actually devilish. Even her appearance didn’t seem that terrible. It had some characteristic of something more than mortal, of course, but she seemed so human that sometimes I wondered if this was all a long-winded practical joke. I glanced back at her, trying to see if there was anything I could ascertain. She’d changed from throwing the football up and down, to throwing it from hand to hand, watching the ceiling looking even more bland than before. 

She didn’t seem like the type to have her own agenda to attend to. Unless she was hiding a mastermind within that scraggly hair of hers, I doubted there was much more to her than she showed. Except… I stroked where her hand had been on my cheek. She was strangely kind, sometimes. When it mattered, when it felt like the walls were closing in. Manipulation, perhaps. If she was capable of such a thing.

“Andrew, dinner!” Calce sat up with a start.

“Dinner?” She brightened.

“Not you,” I grunted. “Stay here, out of sight. I’m going downstairs.” She fell back against bed with a groan and threw the football into the wall, right on target with the dent she’d made yesterday. I flinched, but otherwise remained firm as I walked past her.

“This is just as bad as hell, you know,” she bemoaned as I slipped through the door. With an eyeroll, I ignored her and continued down the stairs. She went out the entire day, she could afford to spend a little time in my room. Then at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the noises she’d make, or whatever else she might try to do. A mastermind she may not be, but she was certainly chaos incarnate.

I raced down the stairs to find my mom plating the dining room with a turkey dinner. Apprehension kicked in, and I narrowed my eyes as I followed her to where my father and sister had already sat down in the cheerily lit room to eat. No matter how often we ate here, it never seemed to feel any more like home than before. I suppose the cardboard boxes still packed from the move didn’t help the illusion that we owned the place.

“What’s the occasion?” I turned to ask my father warily. He sat smiling at the front of the table, and that made me even more nervous.

"You, Andrew,” he beamed. He kissed my mother on the cheek as she sat down to his left, then began to cut at the turkey. “I asked your mother to make us a lovely dinner in celebration.”

I turned to Sam. She looked up from her phone to shrug, then set it down beside her plate to grab at the steamed peas.

“What kind of celebration?” I watched him carefully as I pulled up my own chair. I let him have the bird he was keen on tearing apart; the stuffing was better anyways. “I didn’t win anything.” Briefly, my heart skipped a beat as I thought of the possibility of them knowing anything. I’d been careful and they were oblivious, they couldn’t have realized. I looked at each of their faces. Mom was smiling, father looked like he’d won the lottery, and Sam… She was fine.

“You know Cody’s father?”

“No, dad. I’ve been here for a few weeks and I’ve been focusing on school.”

“Dear, you’ve had plenty of time with school,” my mother interjected. “Let yourself have a few friends.”

I sighed. “Mom, I have friends.”

“But this Cody,” my father continued. “He’s a great kid. Star of the team for Ridgeden, you know. You should really be hanging out with people like him.” He held up a glass of wine with a sparkle in his eye. “And his father’s quite the godly man.”

No. No, please.

“I came across him this afternoon, actually. His father, that is. Worked in the police force, dealing with some animal mauling case, but regardless.” He didn’t seem to notice my fork had stopped moving. “We were talking, reminiscing about better times back when things were closer to God, and I said to him, I had a son of my own. He’s a bright kid, I said, but he’s not the most extroverted sort, and ever since he stopped going to Sunday school, well, I’d been worried.” He sipped at his wine for emphasis. I refused to let it get to me, and focused on spearing my stuffing with my fork. “He said to me, why, that’s too bad! Cody’s an excellent student, and quite the team player. I asked him what he meant, and then his father – Mr. Jacobs that is – he told me this wonderful news! When he’s not busy working, he coaches the team on the weekends. He and the gym teacher are close, and he told me they’re looking for a few extra players with the others graduating so soon. I said to him, well, that’s too bad that you lost your star players. And he gives me a smile and tells me not to worry, because he’s thinking he’s already found someone new. You, Andrew.” He pointed his glass at me with a smile. “So there you go, now you got a spot all picked out, and you just have to show up to practice.”

When he finished I looked up from my plate. Mother was smiling expectantly along with his own smug grin. He was waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to object. If I said even a word against it, I’d be playing into his hands and there would be no going back. I was tired of it.

“I’m not interested in football, Dad.”

“Andy, I really think you should consider taking this position,” my mother crooned. “Your father worked hard to make nice with Mr. Jacobs.”

He still wouldn’t let me live down Sunday School. I’d tried to fight back then and he’d only relented when we moved, but even now, he was still talking about it. There was no room to run from this. “I told both of you, I’m not interested. I don’t. Want. To play.”

It was silent. Neither of them moved. I was almost back to poking at the stuffing when my father slammed his fist down onto the table. The entire wooden structure shook and shifted under the blow. Kitchenware jingled and droplets of pale gravy spilled onto the white tablecloth.

“I worked hard to get you this position, son!” He bellowed. His voice resounded around the room. “You’re going to play, and that’s an order!” I let him yell. There was no point in talking back. “I’ve worked hard to help you in the right direction, but ever since high school you’ve been going back on everything I’ve worked towards! You don’t go to Sunday School, you barely stay for services, and now you’re fighting me on this? I swear, you’re trying to make me yell! I don’t need to raise my voice in my own household!”

“Dear,” my mother tried to speak, but he wasn’t listening.

“I’ve worked hard to make this family a good one,” he grunted. He was calming down now, grumbling instead of yelling. “Your sister does as she’s told. She’s a good girl. I don’t understand where I went wrong.”

I knew he believed that. It just hurt to hear it. No matter the grades, no matter the glowing reviews from teachers, I wasn’t a social butterfly. I didn’t agree to everything anymore. Ever since I tried to argue, it had only made things worse. “Dad,” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do what you’re told.” My fist tightened around the fork, then loosened slowly.

“It’s nice chicken, mom.” Sam looked up from her food in a bid to try and change the subject.

“Turkey, dear.”

“I… Was just thinking at how bad an addition I would be to the team,” I spoke quietly, forcing him to listen. “You’re so passionate about football, I didn’t want to ruin this season for you.” I looked up at him, judging how he’d respond.

“You…” He faltered. “You wouldn’t ruin this season. But that isn’t what this is about- you’re - you’re playing games here son, and I’m saying that you’re going to play if it’s the last thing I do.” It didn’t work. Of course it wouldn’t. It never worked.

Sam piped up again. “Nice turkey, then. Whatever. It’s good.”

“I’m glad you like it, sweetheart. Please have some potatoes, as well.”

“May I be excused?” I asked mother.

“No you may not!” Father growled. “You’re running away from your problems. I didn’t raise a coward!”

“I can’t, I’m trying to watch my figure,” Sam groaned. My eye twitched.

“I’d like to think over what you said. I’m not running.” My heart was beating out of my chest, but I kept my head cool. This would be a later problem. I could find a way to get out of football another time. This volatile animal of my father wasn’t going to be of any reason when he was spitting turkey out of his mouth, and Sam and mom weren’t about to lift a finger to help me. It was one against one, with the silent two playing peanut gallery, and I didn’t want to stay and be subjected to flying food and saliva. Running away wasn’t bad. It meant I could live to fight another day. Dad was larger, stronger, taller than me, with a voice so deep and barrel chested that he made glass tremble.

“Fine,” he growled, and chewed on another bite of turkey. “If that’s what you want.” 

The nail in the coffin. He would have crossed his arms if he wasn’t so busy eating his rage. I turned to my plate, and suddenly didn’t feel hungry. The stuffing looked rancid. I rose quietly instead, tucked my chair into the table, and left my family alone to wander up the stairs. I’d just come back from a war, and my heart was still pounding. It wasn’t like his head was being snapped to the side with blood dripping from his trachea. I could stomach yelling. I wanted to believe I could, that he wasn’t as terrifying. I kept trying to go over it in my head. It was logical, not to fear him as much with everything that had happened today. I shouldn’t have been afraid. But I couldn’t seem to make my heart stop beating so quickly.

“He really likes football, doesn’t he?” Calce looked up at me from her perch, sitting at the bottom of the stairs. I froze, looking back to the rest of my family. I couldn’t see them from here, but it was far too close.

“Calce, you can’t be here,” I hissed. “They might see you. What if Sam wanted to go upstairs? What if-“

“Yeah, well, I suppose I’d kill ‘em.” She rose and patted my shoulder. “You look like shit, you know.”

“I…” I sighed. “Yeah. I feel it, too.”

“You wanna come upstairs and fuck up the football?” She grinned. “I haven’t ripped it to shreds yet. Or we could set it on fire.” I grimaced.

“What did the football ever do to you?”

“Well, it’s less what it’s done to me and more what it seems its going to do to you. Come on,” she grabbed me by the shoulder and tugged me upstairs. “You’re like a twig, I don’t know what the hell your dad thinks you’re going to do in some kind of sports thing.”

I groaned. “I know. I’m not even sure he cares about sports. He’s just so dead set on this idea of the American dream that he thinks anything traditional is a good idea. Throwing a pigskin around with the boys, getting closer to God, supporting veterans, I just… I don’t care about any of that. I don’t want politics, or religion, or anything else. I’d rather bury my nose in a book, and read until my eyes give out.”

“Okay, but that also sounds boring as hell,” she grinned.

“Maybe to you, but reading is one of the most enjoyable things I can do. I like the feeling of getting through a book, and you learn along the way. Especially through history.”

“Blasphemy.” She laughed. “Reading is for nerds.”

“What do I look like to you?” I gestured at myself. “I’ve even got the glasses. With tape around them. I’m the quintessential nerd, complete with this strange ability to attract problems wherever I go. I think sometimes I just rolled out of this mold and I’m expected to work like a wind-up toy, doing everything that I was intended to do. And if I make one wrong step, do one wrong thing, then I’m outside of the lines and I either need to get guided back in or culled. I’m not what my dad wanted, so I’m fighting just to be myself. But even myself, who I am, who I keep gravitating towards… It’s just more of the same. I’m still something boring, no matter what I do, whether that’s agreeing with my father, or agreeing with wherever the wind takes me.” I fell onto my bed with a rush of air as Calce closed the door behind me. “I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to be myself. I hate it.” I held up a fist. “I wanted to punch my dad in his joweled face.” I laughed harshly. “I’m such a coward. It wasn’t until recently I’d even thought of disagreeing with him. Everything before that, it was just a waste of time.”

“You’re a human, all humans are cowards.” With a light laugh, she fell into bed beside me, awkwardly jostling it in the process. I stared up at the ceiling while she found a position to settle in.

"I didn’t do anything. I’d never try to get into trouble, I still never ditch school or skip class. I’m terrified at just the thought of missing an assignment. I didn’t even think to stand up for myself. But I did once. With Sunday school. For what good that did me. But then… I did it again, and I thought I could keep doing it well…. Because of you, really. I thought, if I could handle something like a demon, then I could handle saying outright no to my dad.”

“How did that go?”

“Poorly,” I admitted. “But I still did it. I don’t believe in signs, or superstition – and I guess maybe I should start – but I think, to me, you feel like a weird kind of sign. Like I need to wake up, and actually do something. Be stupid, be rebellious. Even summoning you, I was just going along with my friends, doing whatever they said.” My teeth sunk into my lip thoughtfully. “I don’t think I know how to think for myself.”

Calce went quiet, and the two of us continued to look listlessly at the ceiling that truly held all the answers.

“Now, I’m not one to rehash terrible plans,” she finally drawled. “But maybe, it might be a step in the right direction if you went to that party tomorrow. You know, be a little rebellious, do something your parents don’t want you to do. I don’t exactly want to agree with your shit stain of a friend, but it wouldn’t be a completely… Horrible idea. I’m guessing they’d hate the idea of you going to a party, right? Your family?”

“… Yeah…”

“Then do it, and screw the consequences. Have fun for once. Don’t listen to your inner monologue of trying to stay inside, and don’t listen to your dad. Do something crazy. Maybe even get drunk, I’ll be there to hold your hair back when you puke.” I turned to her, realizing she was a lot closer than I thought. Our noses nearly touched when she followed suit to stare at me with that same shark grin of hers.

“You’d do that for me?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Her grin slowly faded. “It’s not a big deal, you know. I mean, it’s my job to protect you. We don’t want you choking on your own vomit, now do we?”

“I… Guess,” I trailed off, and stared at her. Her eyes were so close. Thinner than normal irises, a bright and violent red that faded to darker tones. The pupils were black, growing and thinning with the flickering light of the computer screen behind us. Her hair, tousled and spiked was a mess against the bed. All of it fell on the side of her face pressed against the blankets. That strange eye, its color, its shape… I seemed to get lost in it. The fact that she was far too close barely registered to me now. “I guess the new Andrew shouldn’t be such a stick in the mud, should he,” I laughed tentatively. “Maybe he should crash that party, and show off that he can do something crazy for once.”

She looked away abruptly, and I blinked in surprise. It was so quick. In a flash of movement her eyes were gone, and she was sitting up with a chuckle as she ran a hand through her hair. She stretched, her voice faintly breathless and throaty. "I think the new Andrew should stop talking in third person, and stop calling himself the new Andrew. Doesn’t exactly suit you."

“Well, I don’t even know what does and doesn’t suit me anymore.” I sat up beside her, studying her face. She was grinning the same as ever, and yet I could see something subtle change. No matter what I looked for, I couldn’t see what. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. “Maybe that’s the new thing I should be doing, to seem more mysterious and interesting.”

“You don’t need to refer to yourself in the third person to be mysterious and interesting.” She rolled her eyes, selecting a pillow from the bed.

“Well, maybe not you. You’ve already got so much going on that I can’t even compete. I’m just one of those boring humans-” Before I could put together what she was doing, she whipped the pillow projectile for a direct hit against my face, and sent me sprawling off the bed with a muffled yelp. My head made a lovely resounding thud against the floor. My heartbeat jumped at the noise, and for half a second I listened with my ear against the floor for the sound of anyone coming up the stairs. Nothing.

Calce peered over the bed in surprise to see me lying there with my glasses scattered a solid foot away from my face. My head was faintly dizzy from the collision against the floor. "You okay there, Summoner?"

"Oh, I’m just fine,” I grumbled. “The pillow just gave me a concussion. Did you have to do that?”

“Well I didn’t expect you to blow away like a stack of leaves.” She smirked. “I guess you’re even worse than I thought.”

“Listen,” I grunted, using the frame of the bed to pull myself up. “I’m not that bad. You’re just incredibly strong, whipping pillows like that.”

“Or maybe you got noodle arms.” She reached out to prod my wrist, and my eyes narrowed.

“I don’t have noodles arms-“ I scoffed. “You have… You’ve got gorilla arms!”

Through the dizzy haze I could see the outline of her face come into focus along with her arm. It was hard to judge without my glasses just how close she was, until her eyes were inches away. She grinned that bright, gleaming shark-toothed smile. “Me? I’m just a little bat, Summoner. What am I going to do, screech at you? You’re just weak. That’s why I gotta protect you.”

“Protect me? You’re protecting me by throwing lethal pillows at my face?”

“I have to prepare you for the possibility of pillows being thrown with lethal force.” Her grin widened.

I glanced down at her face, and for the first time it was her lips that I noticed, rather than those teeth. They seemed soft, even when they were stretched around to accommodate for that intimidating smile. That smile faded as she blinked, watching me for a second longer before quickly moving out of the way with a quick laugh. I’d probably hit my head too hard, and not having glasses didn’t help. But I swore, for a moment, I’d seen her blush.

I grabbed my glasses from the floor awkwardly, finding my way back onto the bed. She said nothing to me as she grabbed the deflated football from the side of the bed and held it up with a discriminating eye, then threw it up in the air again to the familiar tune of a broken ball. I fell back into my chair by the computer, prodding the mouse without going any real research.

“So,” I began. She snapped her head to me in surprise.

“What?”

“What’s it like then? In hell.” She paused, holding the ball in her grip as she thought about it.

“Lot of darkness. Lot of fire. Lot of screaming. Why, planning a vacation trip?”

I snorted. “No, just curious. It’s not every day that you can get a first-hand account of literal hell. I’ve been thinking, there’s so many things I want to ask you, and I’m not even sure where to start. Like, what even is a demon? Or what are you capable of? Why do you need to feed off of blood? Why do you have a physical form? Why do you turn into a bat? Or maybe what Satan is like, if I’m going to spend the rest of my immortal life in hell, then what should I even expect?” I gaped at her, but she just sat there. She lay the football down beside her, and crossed her legs, deep in thought.

“Dunno, dunno, dunno, dunno, dunno, never met him, dunno.”

I deadpanned. “That’s the least helpful thing that has ever come out of your mouth.” She shrugged. “I thought you at least knew something!” I turned back to the computer hopelessly. “You just appear from a book, and suddenly you’re here and I have to deal with having a familiar, and the certainty that I’m going to hell because of it. And now hell’s real, and you’ve been there, and you haven’t exactly been giving it glowing reviews. Can’t you at least give me something?”

“I dunno, I’m like… Several hundred years old…” She started to list things off with her hands. “Made by another demon, got my own form, feed off blood, make fire, immortal… I think that’s about it. Probably missing something important, but I’m sure it’ll come up.”

“This is going to give me anxiety.”

“What, not knowing? What’s so bad about not knowing?”

“Well- when it’s a life or death situation,” I motioned at her emphatically. “EVERYTHING.”

“It’s fine, Summoner. You need to relax. You’re the new Andrew, remember?” She grinned.

“The new Andrew would still like to not go to hell if possible.” I sighed in resignation. “But you’re not exactly wrong. We have time. I’ll worm things out of you somehow.” I looked over at her and was surprised to see that almost unnoticeable blush again.

“What?”

She laughed to herself. “Worm.”

“Worm?” I chuckled. “Really? Are you that immature? You just said you were several hundred years old.” 

“Age is just a number.” She lay back in the bed. “You never destroyed the football.”

“I don’t care about destroying the football.”

“The new Andrew would most definitely care about destroying the football.”

“The new Andrew does not care if there is or isn’t a football, as long as he isn’t playing the football.”

“How do YOU know what the new Andrew even wants? Maybe he likes setting things on fire. See, that would be mysterious and interesting.”

“No, I’m not going to be a pyromaniac because a demon whispers in my head that it’s a good idea.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s the most clichéd thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I don’t know about clichés, I haven’t been around long enough to see what the hell things are like anymore.” She paused. “Can we go somewhere?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe the new Andrew might want to skip school, right?” She smiled tentatively. “Is there anything to do, anywhere to go, something I can sink my teeth into?” I looked back at my books.

“But… I’ve got school.”

“Skip it then,” she suggested. “Do the rebellious thing.”

It was a terrible idea. I was listening to a demon. I was mulling the thought over in my head just because this creature suggested it. And now I was wordlessly nodding my head along in agreement, knowing full well that the repercussions for this would be severe. This was a terrible idea, but that was the point. Follow the terrible ideas.

“To be the new Andrew, then,” I said. “I think I have something in mind.”


	7. Get in the Fucking Car We're Going Shopping

Staring at the ceiling, I was starting to realize this was a terrible idea.

But then, that was the old Andrew’s problem. The new Andrew’s problem was trying to figure out how to keep the old Andrew’s anxiety from keeping him awake at night.

“Calce,” I nudged her sleeping form as soon as I had judged enough time had passed. I’d spent hours watching her when I couldn’t fall asleep. She acted so human, that it was difficult to see her as anything else than a girl sleeping in my bed. I couldn’t seem to connect her sleeping to the animal that had torn Peter apart. The strange, eclectic creature kept me from growing bored as I waited in vain for sleep, even when she herself found it so easy. Now, she was curled up in a mess of blankets beside me, a chaos of clothes and mussed hair. She swatted my hand away with a groan and woke herself up. All that time that had stood still was gone, and she was back once again to monster I knew and tolerated. By the time I was grabbing my clothes to change in the bathroom, she had her hair fixed and her eyes trained on me with a curious expression. Those eyes were one thing I couldn’t pretend were human, but that didn’t make them any less intriguing.

“Where are we going?” She asked when I’d returned. She had another awful pointed grin, something else that kept her uncanny enough for anyone to be uncomfortable. It hadn’t been long, but I’d already begun to grow used to it. There were different kinds of grins she had, and this one was just mischievous. I could find myself comfortable in mischief, I supposed. That’s what I needed to latch onto today, if I had any chance in hell at enjoying myself. “Somewhere fun?”

“Well, I suppose it would be.” I looked over at the broken alarm clock, sighed, then checked my computer for the time. “My family’s out, so we won’t have to sneak away.” That was one thing I had been terrified at the thought of. I didn’t want another rehash of dinner. My parents hadn’t said a word to me since then, and I didn’t want them to continue that conversation with questions as to why I hadn’t left for school.

“What’s with the suppose? C’mon, just tell me. I don’t like surprises.”

  
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a big deal. Just turn into a bat, and we’ll get going. You can turn human when we get there.”

“Why won’t you just tell me?”

“Can’t I just surprise you?” She’d not been in the human world since the invention of orange soda, so I’d thought a reintroduction to human society might have been in order. She didn’t seem that interested in my computer, but that wasn’t easily accessible. Nor did I want her to touch it. The outside world though, that was something she wouldn’t be able to break as easily as an alarm clock.

“So you’re putting the bat back in the bag?” She grumbled. “Do you take pleasure in choking me with all of your school supplies?”

“You’re overreacting,” I snorted, holding out the bag for her to go in. “It’s not that bad, I even made sure to leave you room between the essentials-”

“Not that bad?” She rolled over the bed towards me with a groan, ending up stretched out on her stomach. “You have no idea how fucking suffocating it is in there. Smells like gross chemicals and old lunches half eaten. It’s a graveyard of forgotten Andrew.”

I rubbed my temples. “I never leave lunches, and there’s nothing chemical about the smell of textbooks, it’s just plastic-”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a bunch of condoms in there, all unused of course-”

“I’ll move the books!” I grabbed the bag, tugging out the textbooks one by one furiously and whipping to the side of the bed, then showed her the empty bag for good measure, shaking it front of her smirking face. “Is this more pleasing to you, your highness? Are you done complaining?”

She gave the bag a discriminating look, then sniffed it. She wrinkled her nose. “Now it just smells like Andrew.”

“What’s wrong with my smell?”

“Do you shower?”

“You’re not going to get to me.” I pushed my glasses up, then shouldered the pack. “I shower regularly and you’re just trying to be insulting.”

“I’m not being insulting, I just care about your hygiene,” She grinned. “It’s important for teenage boys to shower regularly, you know.”

“Do you want to go? We don’t have to go. I can just sit here and torrent horror movies. We don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Shit I love horror movies.”

“WE’RE GOING TO THE MALL,” I hissed.

Her eyes narrowed in a satisfied smirk, her mission finally accomplished. “Now, was that so hard?”

I heaved breaths, glaring at her with half crazed eyes. Her shit eating grin. I couldn’t stand it, so I turned away, pushed up my glasses that had started to fall again, and threw the bag at her feet. “Get in the damn bag.”

“Of course, Summoner. I live to follow your orders.” In a flash behind me, she was a flying fox. I glanced around at the creature that now struggled to walk over the sheets, her ears flicking around intensely with small squeals as she crawled painstakingly towards the opening of my backpack. I only wanted to strangle her a little less.

I shoved the squeaky toy into my bag and stormed out of the room.

…..

“So what’s the mall like?”

“It’s a mall.”

“Are you still upset?” Calce prodded my elbow with a finger as she almost jogged to keep up with my long strides. It didn’t put her out of breath, but I was nearly huffing with the effort to still act like I was angry. We were in the excuse the small town had for a shopping district, which extended to a small collection of restaurants, a few chain stores, and some repair stores for lumber equipment that all looked like they were on the edges of going out of business. The downtown corridor was bigger than I expected for a small town, but no less disappointing. The mall was at the center of this shameful display, the one thing that Ridgeden was desperately using to keep the economy going. Next to the Hospital, it might have been the largest building in the entire town. But with it being a school day, the streets were relatively quiet. It made it feel even more like a ghost town than it was already. A few trucks down the two-lane roads, older models than I had ever seen the cities. I didn’t recognize anyone, but then, I hadn’t been here long enough for that small-town curse of being recognized where ever I went to take effect. I felt calm somehow, walking down the thin sidewalk dotted with cigarette butts long forgotten.

“No.” Only annoyed. I’d trained the strangling out of me.

Calce flitted about around me, looking almost worried. I stayed staring ahead, trying to ignore her. “I didn’t mean it when I said you had unused condoms, I’m sure you-”

“Please don’t.” My eye twitched. I reached under my glasses to rub it, and let out a long sigh. “What is your obsession with condoms?”

“What? No obsession. What are you talking about?”

“Or about smelling me, huh?” I glanced at her.

“Your scent is average. Maybe nice, if I was forced to smell it for a long period of time.” She stuck out her tongue. “Now you’re just teasing me.”

I rolled my eyes. “What were you doing at home, then?” I countered.

“Playing. Can’t I have fun? I barely get to do anything unless it’s following you around. Not that I’m not grateful you let me even be here- not that I dislike that you’re-”

I smiled faintly. “It’s fine. I’m not going to get upset over your shitty sense of humor.”

She stopped in the middle of the path as I continued walking, then ran after me with a growl. “Shitty sense of humor?!”

“Is there an echo in here?”

“No fuck you, my sense of humor is the best. I make myself laugh all the time.” I bit my lip, but I couldn’t help but burst out into laughter in front of her. Even as she scowled at me, then lightly slapped my shoulder to keep me from collapsing on the side of the road.

“Hey, that wasn’t a fucking joke, dumbass!”

“It’s the funniest thing you’ve said all day,” I grinned.

She bit her lip, but didn’t seem to account for the piercing of her fang. It went right through her lip, and she hissed as blood pooled around the wound.

“Are you okay?” I stared in shock as the tiniest flame replaced the little bead of blood and twisted gently in the breeze for a moment or two before blowing itself out. In its place was the skin, slightly red, but clean. Uncut. “What…”

“What?” She looked at me in question. “I heal fast.” She grinned.

“That’s not healing fast, that’s fire.” I was so focused on her mouth that I nearly backed myself into a lamppost.

“It’s just how I heal, it’s not that big of a deal.” She fingered where the wound had been moments ago. “Does this sort of thing scare you? Of all things?”

“Well it’s yet another thing you haven’t told me – and I’m not scared. I’m supposed to be the new Andrew.” I crossed my arms. “I’m not meant to get scared so easily.”

“I told you, control over fire. Immortal.”

“I don’t know what that fucking entails! What do you mean, fire? What do you even mean by immortal? There’s so many questions and you can’t seem to give me a straight answer with any of them.” I continued walking in a huff. “Are you being hard to figure out by choice? You think I’d get bored afterwards?”

“No, I thought we established that I’m as thick as a stack of bricks.” She chased after me with ease and was soon back to keeping up with me. “I don’t even know how to explain some things. I hurt, fire, no hurt.”

“That’s more than enough to explain things.” I walked through the automatic sliding doors. Music played faintly through the almost empty hall of the one long corridor that the building consisted of, with a long ago broken fountain being the only centerpiece of the scene. A woman sat at one of the benches beside it, gently pushing a baby back in forth in a stroller as it cried. A gaggle of older men flocked around the convenience store with their lottery cards in one hand and coffees in the other.

“Talk like a caveman and you understand me? I suppose I should be speaking in your language more often then.”

“You’re the one who said they were stupid. Now you’re saying I’m the dumb one?” I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help but grin. “Why don’t you go play in that department store?” 

“Really?” Her eyes gleamed, running ahead towards the entrance and quickly jumping the turnstiles before the lonesome greeter could stop her. I smiled apologetically as I followed her a little more meekly. The elderly woman in uniform glared at me disapprovingly as I passed. That expression spoke more about my truancy than any reprimand could, but I brushed it off and followed the rambunctious demon inside. However, just as I tried to catch up to her, it was like a bolt of electricity hit her. She rushed the closest aisle with a nearly screaming laugh. My eyes widened, reaching out to grab her, but she was already far out of my reach.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” I muttered under my breath.

In moments, Calce was out of sight, but her laugh remained as she ran about the store. The sharp cackle seemed to drown out the department store’s own music. Luckily enough it was easy to follow the chaos she left and the sound of that laugh, but the problem was I just wasn’t fast enough. No matter how much I chased after her, she was far ahead of me on the other side of the store by the time I got to where I’d heard her. I rushed by the few customers in the store that were here to grab groceries, the man pushing frozen pizzas stacked in his cart, the woman and her young toddler that cried over what kind of cereal she wanted. I nearly ran into one of the stockers as I turned a corner, only avoiding the man by an inch as I side stepped him and continued running without a chance to catch my breath. The sharp clash of cans falling over made me wince, but by the time I’d gotten to the soup aisle to see them in a mess that was once a pyramid, she was gone to the clothing section. I tried to sprint after her, but there was no way I could keep up. I sprinted straight into a clothing rack that I was sure hadn’t been there a moment earlier, only to find it was mobile and being pushed by a large store clerk that looked less than impressed.

I ended up wheezing by the furniture, struggling to an armchair with what strength I had left, and finally falling with the backpack sliding itself off my back and ending up on the ground. I didn’t care. I’d already lost my glasses in the side of the cushions. Her laughter still rang in my ears, taunting me. I couldn’t keep up with that, and I didn’t think there was a point to try. I groaned and let the couch cushions take me.

“Are you alright, sir?” I jumped at the noise, then winced as my muscles spasmed. Looking up, I saw a blurry image of a girl. “Oh, nevermind. Kid?”

“One moment-” I fished my glasses out of the cushions and carefully positioned them on my face. About my age, strawberry blonde hair. And a sales uniform. I sighed. “I’m alright, thank you. I’m just considerably interested in this upholstery.” With a groan, I dropped my head back down.

“Are you sure? You don’t really look good. Like you’re about to faint or something.” She sat down beside me, peering over curiously. I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I’m good. I just thought I’d inadvertently take up running. I hear it’s all the rage, a good way to stay fit.”

She giggled. “In the store?”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea.” I let my head fall back against the arm rest beside her. “I’m kind of looking for a screaming demon child but I can’t seem to catch her.”

“Is that a metaphor or something?” She smiled, and I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, she hasn’t made herself known in this part of the store yet. But she’ll be here. And when she is, I’ll be ready. Ready to be completely unable to catch her because I’m not sure I can feel my legs.” She laughed faintly.

“Maybe you shouldn’t take up running in the store then,” she smiled. “My name’s Ellen.”

“I could read the name tag, yes. My name’s Andrew. I don’t have a name tag, sadly.”

“Well, funny man Andrew,” She blushed with another chuckle. “I’m off work in a little bit. If you’re able to walk again by that time, you might find yourself in need of refreshment and I happen to know a pretty good coffee shop. Well, the only coffee shop in the mall, but still. A coffee shop nonetheless. If you were interested in getting a coffee or something.” I squinted.

“What?”

“I’m off work soon-”

“No no I mean- you’re-” I stared at her quizzically. “Is this one of those date things?”

“W-well it doesn’t have to- I mean-”

“No, I’m flattered.” I quickly held up my hands. “Really. I’ve… Well I’ve never actually been asked, and I’m not sure you’re my - but – um, now’s not the best time.”

“Why, the demon child?”

“Yeah she’s-”

“What is she?” An arm wrapped itself around my neck. When I looked up, the fangs were what I noticed first. Ripping, sharp fangs, and scarily bright eyes. It took a moment for me to realize Calce was grinning, glancing at me, then up at the girl. I gulped.

“Annoying.” I smiled hesitantly. “I didn’t mean for you to wreck terror upon the department store, you know.”

“I didn’t expect you to try to run after me.” She shrugged. “That’s your fault, you know. I was doing just fine without you following after me, my Summoner.”

“Um.” Ellen looked between the two of us, her smile deflating. “I thought you were joking.”

“I wish I was,” I sighed deeply. 

“No you don’t,” Calce drawled, poking my head and smiling easily at the clerk. “I’m Calce and I think I accidentally made a mess down the soup aisle. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Ellen said curtly, looking between Calce and I. Her eyes settled on her arm around my shoulder hung only loosely. I looked up to Calce. Her eyes were gleaming again, focused on the girl. She has a strange look, one I couldn’t quite understand. Perhaps she was on guard again, but I didn’t know how to subtly explain to her that a store employee wasn’t going to try to kill me. “It’s not my department.”

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I didn’t expect her to be a child about this. This is the first time she’s been in a mall, believe it or not.”

“Well,” Ellen stood up, and handed me back my intrepid backpack. She started walking as she said her last quip. “I’m not going to ruin your fun. Just as long as you and your girlfriend don’t cause anymore mess. I’m going to finish my shift.”

“Wait- what?” Both of us spoke at once. I jumped to my feet and realized a little too late that was a terrible idea. I buckled to my knees with a wince, my muscles on fire. But Calce looked even worse, her bottom lip quivering as she held out her hand with a look of sheer loss on her face.

“He’s not my boyfriend, though…”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” I called, but the girl had already left by the time I’d struggled to my feet. Calce helped lead me back to the armchair with a long-suffering sigh. 

“You upset about your type running away?” The demon asked, sitting on the arm of the chair, uttering a muffled noise as her back collided with the high back of the chair.

“I- no, but- she asked me out, and I thought it’d be rude to just… Have her think I was being mean, or something, I don’t know.” I smiled hesitantly. “Leading her on, I guess?”

“Wait, she asked you out?” Calce blinked.

“Yeah that was confusing to me too,” I admitted.

“But… But she was hot as fuck! How is she not your type?”

Her outburst made me chuckle. “Well I suppose- wait.” I paused, then looked at Calce with a careful expression. That look she gave the girl before – that wasn’t some kind of... “Is… Is she your type?” She nodded emphatically.

“Completely! She’s not yours?”

“No- wait, you’re gay?” I stared at the last thing I’d expected. Did demons have attractions? Genders? Sexuality? How did any of this even work?

“What?”

“You just- I’m confused.” I scratched my head. “Not gay, but-”

“I’m not gay.”

“Okay.”

“But girls are hot.”

“… Okay.”

“But I’m really not gay.”

I gave her a look.

“… Guys are okay too.”

“. . . . Okay. Is this important with demons? Do you even have like, a sexuality? Isn’t that a human invention, or at the very least a biological one?”

Her smile faded, and she shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. You told me to tell you things. I tried to explain it in caveman terms.”

“Yes, I noticed. Thanks for your informing me of your gender preferences. Or lack thereof, I suppose. I don’t think there’s a point to understanding that.” I finally managed to get out of the armchair without falling back, and clutched at the stitch in my side, rubbing it gently. “Have you gotten your explosive excitement for the future out of your system yet?”

“What is your type, then?” She prodded.

“Why can’t you just answer my question?” I groaned.

“Why can’t you answer mine?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. Very not gay, but that’s all I know. Happy?”

“I guess,” she crossed her arms with a sniff, but there was a slight smile on her face anyways. Teasing me again, I supposed. “Yeah, I’m done. I came over because I got tired, and thought we should get going.” I blinked.

“Oh, alright then. If you’re bored, I’m sure there’s other places to destroy with some kind of crazy demon rambunctiousness.”

“No, I mean, I’m out of juice.”

“What does that even mean? You want to nap?” I looked at her questioningly.

“I’m hungry.”

I paled. Images suddenly entered my head. Broken bodies. A jaw almost dislocating itself as it bit into the trachea of a person still desperately trying to breathe. A monster destroying a human body to feed off its flesh. “Oh.”

She scoffed. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” She grabbed my arm, dragging me to the exit. I followed along behind numbly. She was hungry. She was going to kill again. Whatever amount of comfort I’d had with her had gone out the window. She wasn’t some stupid crazy person, or some kind of mesmerizing girl, she was a murderer, and her grip on my arm was like iron. I wasn’t worried for my own safety. But that didn’t make me any less terrified of what she was going to do to an innocent person. We passed by Ellen on the way out, but I was too tongue tied to say anything to the girl who tossed her hair as soon as she caught a glimpse of me. It could have been her. She could have just grabbed that girl and brought her somewhere to rip her to pieces. It could have been that baby, crying in its stroller, or the mother that was now rocking is desperately to make her child stop. It could have been the older man smoking right outside the back of the mall who left back inside as soon as we went past him.

I whimpered faintly when she finally let go of me and sent me sprawling at the very back of the mall. The parking lot was almost as empty as the rest of the mall, but it spent even less effort to try to make itself presentable. We were in a desert of cement, with only the occasional abandoned vehicle being the only landmarks. Beyond that, broken down factory buildings and general stores enclosed us. Pockets of crab grass and dead trees marking the islands were the only bits of green around. I felt like I was going to throw up.

I stared up at Calce apprehensively and quickly clambered to my feet. “Who are you going to kill?”

“What?” She tilted her head to the side.

“To feed.” I gulped.

“I don’t need to kill to feed.” She blinked. “Did you think I did?” I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“Peter,” I stammered. “What about him?”

“That was to protect you. I don’t need to do that. All I need is a little blood, that’s all. It’s not a big deal.”

“Like… a vampire?” I asked tentatively. She wrinkled her nose.

“I guess. Never really thought about it that way. But I suppose it can work. I prefer the meat as well, but blood is just as good to keep me going.” She took a step closer towards me. “It’s not that much, and the teeth make it pretty easy to make the cut. It doesn’t even hurt that much. I’m really careful.” Realization hit me as she grabbed my arm again, this time carefully. “May I?”

“What, off me? My blood?” I stared at her. Her vibrant red eyes flicked to my neck.

“Well, yeah. I’ll be gentle. I know how to do it, so it barely hurts.”

“In what universe would you biting into me barely hurt?” I gulped. “How can I even trust you about something like that?”

“You trusted me minutes ago. You were chatting with me like I was just a regular person. I saved you. And I’m your familiar. Your guardian. I can’t kill you, and I won’t hurt you. No more than absolutely necessary. You can order me to do things, and I’ll do them.”

“Is this really necessary?” I cried.

“I’m hungry, Andrew.” She looked up at me in desperation, and I gulped. Her eyes were like a snake’s, keeping me shaking and unable to move from my position. “Yes, it’s necessary. No one else would let me, except maybe your friend, and he’s far off and away. I can’t protect you if I’m weak, now can I?”

“Is this a test?” I muttered. “Are you trying to see if I can do it?”

“Maybe. Are you afraid?”

“Terrified.”

She nodded to herself, as if in confirmation in something, then pressed her lips up against my wrist.

“Not a bad fear to have.” She murmured against my skin.

“Just do it.” I watched the creature that carefully pressed her lips in closer as she held my arm up, then winced at the pain as she bit down. It burned, like a hard scrape against the cement when you fall because you didn’t watch where you were going. But with it came a needle sharpness. Multiple tiny cuts digging themselves into my skin, eviscerating it in order to worry away at the veins in my wrist. I gritted my teeth impatiently. They were just as sharp as I imagined they’d be. She worked quickly to make the initial cut, and then it was over. She hid her teeth behind her lips and sucked at the trickling blood instead. It still burned, but the teeth were gone and in its place…

I flushed faintly at the loll of her tongue moving over the wound. It lapped gently at the flowing blood and made sure not a drop was spared. I bled right into her mouth. Her mouth was pressed so close that I could feel the vibrations of the faint and satisfied hum as she fed off of me. I’d never felt anything stranger in my life, standing in the middle of a forgotten parking lot of a rundown mall, letting a demon feed off my blood. She was finished after a minute and let my hand drop, then grinned up at me. “There. Now was that so hard?”

“No…” I muttered, and quickly turned away. I was floating in a haze of confusion and strange emotions. I didn’t want her seeing my face. I pushed my glasses up with my other hand. “Let’s go. I haven’t had a chance to explore this town yet, and we still have a few hours before the party anyways.”

“Are you alright there, Summoner?” She tugged my sleeve, but I pulled it away from her quickly.

“Fine.” She flinched back.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m supposed to be your protector, remember?”

“I know, I know, in the job description.” I rubbed my face of the warmth that was growing increasingly uncomfortable. “I’m not scared.” Finally, I glanced back at her with a grin. “It’s fine. Let’s go explore. You’re with the new Andrew, remember? I’m like Dean, completely unafraid. Maybe not to my detriment like him, but I’m not going to be a boring stick in the mud and let something like that scare me.”

She narrowed her eyes, then grinned faintly with a teasing tone to her voice. “What did I say about you referring to yourself in the third person?”

“That it was an excellent and original idea.”

“Blasphemy.”


	8. Neglect Your Problems and Party Instead

A frat house unlike any I’d ever seen before. Nestled at the very tip of the town, in the midst of the encroaching forest, it seemed like an overgrown ruin than a house a group of young men would use when they weren’t busy trying to pass exams. It was a haunted manor, the walls of the building stretched a little too tall, and the structure itself almost seemed to sway in the wind like it would fall apart at any second. There must have been a hundred safety standard problems just looking at the place. I’d been here once before, but that had been under a ritual. I was too afraid at the time to take stock in the actual house they lived in, and honestly… I supposed it was understandable. It made sense that they couldn’t afford anything better than a glorified ruin. It was a sharp contrast to the university houses I’d seen in the city, but they were their own kind of terrible. Instead of rats, I guessed they’d get skunks and foxes in their backyard, and the ever-present unholy gremlin that was the raccoon. Everyone had their own kind of culture, whether it was a small town or a bit city. But a raccoon, that kind of monster could link us all together in a united fear of the noises it made at night.

The booming noise they called music though, that was something I was definitely used to, that and the punched out windows from whatever guy thought it was a good idea at the time. I’d lived in the loud noise my whole life, and I hated the sickly quiet of this tiny town. It was almost comforting to hear noise that tested the limits of my ear drums. As the sun set, the bright lights of the house illuminated the way for me as I walked down the edge of the ancient paved road. The last time a cement truck went over it must have been decades ago. It was only one lane, but somehow they’d managed to get a dozen cars parked at the front, bumper to bumper. Ahead, the song crescendoed into a solo of techno, and the ground itself seemed to shiver under the weight of the song’s vibration. The drums and steady beat were felt all the way into my chest and lungs. I could just hear laughter above that. Men, women, maybe even a few high-schoolers. Through the lit windows, I could only see illuminated shadows of dancing and wandering around. And in front of the building, the only thing keeping the cars company were empty solo cups. The real party had fled inside with the darkness.

“Hell, you feel that?” The sudden voice of Calce beside me made me jump. She spoke loud enough for me to hear her above the noise.

“Feel what?”

“In the air. That beat.”

“The… Music?” I gestured around us. “Pretty hard to ignore.”

“No. Something else. I feel ready to go.” Her eyes gleamed like an animal. “I want to do something. I feel like, like I have to do something.”

“… Kill?” I ventured nervously.

“Maybe.” She glanced at my paling face and grinned faintly. “Something dark is in the air. Though, I would never without doing so under your orders, Summoner. I got enough blood from you.” She smirked. “Virgin’s is absolutely the best.”

I glared at her, then pushed up my glasses. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But we shouldn’t waste time standing around here. I’m supposed to show you off.” I glanced around, and frowned. “I thought that Dean would have at least waited here to see you again. But I suppose he just went off ahead. The others probably wouldn’t show up, they seemed...” Afraid. They should have been. I was too busy trying to push that part of me deep down inside to make room for the new Andrew. I shouldn’t be afraid. Fear just made it harder to focus. Calce wasn’t about to hurt me. That was one thing I could count on.

“You put way too much trust into them, you know.” She inclined her head. “They’re kind of assholes. I mean, I only met them once, but douche-bag radiates off of them like the scent of rotting flesh. I wouldn’t want anything to do with them, personally.”

“I don’t care about what you think.”

“Rude.”

I bit my lip, and started for the front door. “I know, they’re not the best. But I don’t like to be an utter loner. And they were palatable in a sea of the rest of them, I guess. Dean’s not bad, and Jesse’s okay too. Raymond is actually nice when you get to know him, if a little uninterested.”

“Yeah yeah whatever. Just, be careful.” Her tone was sincere. “You don’t know them. Probably would be a good idea to be careful in general here. This feeling, it’s not something that seems normal. I’m not sure how to explain it but… It’s just strange.”

I rolled my eyes. She was rambling. “I don’t know you either. Even less.”

“Whatever.” She shoved me to the side and tugged the door open, storming it like she’d done this countless times before. The music changed from that deep synth in our chests to a noise so loud it was difficult to think, and with it came the rise of screaming and laughing voices. The lights around us fluctuated with the noise and strobed with the extra specialty lamps in the corners. There were people everywhere, drinking laughing, throwing up, and drinking some more. Even as I tried to step in I had to side step the dancing bodies of girls drunk out of their minds, laughing at just the sight of me and Calce. Their hands found their way on my sleeve and I felt the faint tugging as they tried to pull me into the gyrating dance, but I smiled sheepishly and followed the demon with a murmured apology there was no way they could hear. Quickly, I realized the little gremlin was about to speed off again.

I grabbed the collar of her shirt just in time. She hissed back at me in annoyance.

“I haven’t had a drink in decades, damnit!”

“Don’t run away this time.” I pulled her closer. There was barely a pull as she fell back to me. It was obvious she had let me pull her back, as I knew I’d never be able to do it if she put any force into doing what she wanted. It put me only slightly more at ease. Her obedience would at least make this a little easier. “I’m supposed to show you off, remember? How can I do that if you run the hell away?”

“I promise I’d find you again,” she whined. “I haven’t gotten drunk in fucking years and there’s an entire table of it now. I just… Just wanna get my claws in it, that’s all. I’ll pace myself. Totally.” She made grabbing motions for the table covered in spirits and half empty bottles of tequila. 

“I somehow think that you and alcohol is a bad combination. I’m supposed to find Dean and the others, I don’t need you losing your inhibitions on top of that. Please. Make this easier for me.” She groaned, then hunched her shoulders.

“Fine.” I let her go, and she stayed still, eyeing up the room instead as I searched for Dean. The living room was filled to the brim, and the furniture looked like it had seen better days even before this party. The main room was filled with upturned and broken couches that surrounded a large spotted rug, and beside the room was a dining that led into an obviously well used kitchen. It was here that the tables of drinks stood as a kind of alter to drunk college kids and high-schoolers that wanted a taste of the life. Old armchairs and side tables had been torn out of the way to make for loud speakers that played the music that kept communication difficult, but no one seemed to care. Whatever DJ system they had was wireless; I didn’t see any setup. Nor did I see any sign of my friends in the midst of this mess. I was so focused and keen on taking in the sight of the first party I’d ever been too, that I only just caught just conversation taking place behind me.

“Hey there gorgeous.”

“Yo.” That was not a good sound. Calce being talked to by unaware people, no that was a very bad sound. I turned around with a raised eyebrow to one of the college guys chatting to the demon. His entire body reeked of weed, and he couldn’t seem to keep his composure no matter what he said. Giggles kept erupting from his mouth, sloshing his bottle of hard lemonade as he tried to stay standing. I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to back Calce into a corner so quickly, but she seemed less than impressed. My breath hitched at the memory of what she’d done to Dean. I wasn’t sure how much I could actually trust her to do what I asked her, no matter how many times she said she would.

“What say you and I head upstairs,” he slurred. “I got this great stash of shit, way better than drinks here. Plus I’m way less stiff than your boyfriend here. You can have whatever you want. Well, still stiff in some places.” Calce’s eye twitched, turning to me with pleading eyes.

“Little punch? Just a little one?”

“No,” I ordered. “We’re not hurting anyone tonight. Hands to yourself.” I tried to sound clear, but I wasn’t sure if it would actually work.

“Tell HIM that!” Her teeth gritted as he dared to try stroking her hair. She ducked away, sidestepping back to me. “I NEED AN ADULT.”

I sighed in relief as she rushed back over to me, then turned over to the guy with as intimidating an aura as I could managed, pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “She’s not my girlfriend, but I’m pretty sure she has better standards than that,” I spoke just over the loud speakers that threatened to drown out my words, subtly pulling Calce behind me. “I’d bother somebody else.” He scowled for a moment, and my bravado almost faltered. But even that he couldn’t keep up for long. Quickly he turned into a fit of giggles, which changed into guffaws of laughter as he slapped the side of his thigh. More drink sloshed out of the bottle than he’d actually drunk. He pointed his drink at me.

“You’re alright, man. Ah hell, guess I’m fucked then. Hell, she’s hot though. Fuck her for me good, yeah?” He waved at me with a lopsided grin, then turned about to leave. The two of us watched him walk a few feet, then without slowing, slam into a support post of the main room. I stared at him fall down in front of the drink table, sliding down with a groan, then close his eyes as he passed out. The few people that had noticed glanced his way, but the party overall seemed to continue regardless.

I looked to Calce at the same moment that she looked to me.

“Well.” I rubbed the back of my neck.

“Yeah. You know I could have punched him out and we would have had the same outcome, right?”

“It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t want you attacking everyone that interacts with you.”

She motioned violently at the passed-out college guy on the floor. “I DIDN’T.”

“I noticed.”

“GOOD.”

“Would you like a gold star?”

“YES.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“Sure. Have one. Now, let’s find Dean before anything like that happens again.” 

“Andrew!” Speak of the devil. While it wasn’t too difficult to hear the clipped unique sound of Calce’s voice, the disembodied call of my name was almost impossible to hear. I whipped my head around, looking for the source, but it took Dean waving at me from the other side of the main room to catch him.

His brother looked the very image of what Dean tried to emulate. Corey was a scene fashion statement taken to its punk extremes. Lime green hair, yellow contacts, and so much black it would be difficult to see him in the middle of the night. Except, I supposed, for that neon hair. He also acted the aloof part, not seemed to care when I dragged Calce over to the two of them. Dean seemed the opposite, a grin stretching from ear to ear as he struggled to stay upright on his own two feet. I guessed he wasn’t on his first drink.

“I see you came.” Dean raised a solo cup filled to the brim, then took a long drink. He coughed a second later, but grinned again nonetheless. “This is awesome, right? Got free drinks and everything.”

“Not free, dumbass,” Corey growled. “I had to chip in on some of that.”

“Where’s Jesse and Raymond?” I asked Dean, trying to listen as hard as I could with the speakers blasting so close to us. Within feet of the tall sound system, it was all but impossible to hear them. “I haven’t seen them.”

“They’re busy upstairs. I think Jesse found the only other homo in the whole town, and Raymond’s getting high. Almost joined him, actually.”

“You just left them alone?” I asked incredulously. Dean gave me a wry look.

“It’s a party, Andrew. There’s no buddy system. Haven’t you ever been to a party?”

“I…” I rubbed the back of my neck and tried not to catch the teasing grin of Calce. Dean cackled and grabbed me by the shoulder, jostling the overly filled solo cup in the process. It added to the stained mosaic spreading on the ancient carpet.

“No sweat, it’s fine. Just know you’re here to have fun, alright? Don’t get freaked because there’s people fucking or whatever in the corner. Have a drunk, have a smoke, and have fun.” I wanted to, but it was easy to just tell someone to do something. It was harder to actually do it. Even the new Andrew was having a hard time dealing with everything going on.

Corey broke in with an impatient snarl. “So where’s the fucking demon, then? I don’t want to have to waste anymore time here with you losers than I have to.” He crossed his arms, looking between us.

“You’re looking at her.” Dean gestured with the cup, wobbling somewhat on his feet. “This is Calce. I told you she was hot, right?” Corey squinted.

“What, did she possess a dyke?”

“Possess?” Calce drew her head back, clearly insulted. “You really think I’m that weak of a demon? I have my own form thank you very much…” She nudged my shoulder. “Hey, what’s a dyke?” I shook my head adamantly.

“No,” I mouthed.

Dean punched his brother’s shoulder gently with a laugh, his eyes twinkling mischievously. “Hey, she’s hot, don’t be like that. She might be kind of prickly on the outside, but she’s one of the coolest things to come out of this cult. Like, it’s great and all, but Andrew summoning her? Now that’s something interesting. She’s totally fucking awesome, like, the coolest shit ever. She’s her own demon, even got her own form and everything.”

“You really just punch me?”

Dean blinked. “Sorry, bro, I didn’t mean to, I just thought-” he grinned tentatively. “It’s a party, you know? Take a load off. It’s fine. You’re always so serious ever since Jack, you should let yourself have a chance to go with the flow, you know?”

He didn’t have the fine motor skills to duck the punch. One moment he was standing, and the second he was crumpling to the floor like a stack of cards, the direct hit on his cheek brutally crunching his jaw bone. His brother held out the fist that had sucker punched him in the cheek, unwavering as he watched his own brother fall. The solo cup fell out of Dean’s hand, broken as it fell against the ground. The carpet eagerly accepted the alcohol, soaking up the tribute that Dean’s face had fallen against.

“Fucking drunk ass,” Corey growled, then looked at the two of us with a discriminating eye. I was too busy staring at Dean to pay attention. “You really mean to tell me that she’s not possessing someone? That’s her own form?”

I pointed with a shaking hand to Dean. “You just punched out your own brother.” 

“So? He deserved it. Doesn’t he get on your nerves?” He acted like it was nothing. I stared at him, waiting for something, anything in his eyes. Nothing. It was cold.

“Yeah, but… You punched him. You punched him out.” I let my hand fall, and gulped as I took in Dean’s crumpled form, then looked up to the neon haired man. “He doesn’t deserve that, does he? That was uncalled for.”

“Fuck you. He comes in here, drinks my shit, plays like a big boy, he better expect to be treated like one. I don’t need a fucking lecture from the pussy pastor boy, alright?” He gritted his teeth at me, and I bit my tongue. “Besides, he ain’t the reason I’m bothering to talk with you. I heard what you did, and I told Jack. He wants to see you, so I’m here to grab you.” His scowl turned into somewhat of a grin. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Based on what Dean’s told me, you’re somewhat of a celebrity. If that can be proven, that is. For all I know, this is just some chick with edgy contacts.”

“What?” I found myself tongue tied.

“Yeah, what?” Calce echoed. “I’m not here to be escorted like some kind of animal. If Jack wants to talk, why can’t he come see the both of us? Not exactly the partying type?” Her hackles were raised. She was just as wary about him as I was, and for good reason. Something was clearly off.

“Can you control your demon, please?” He lolled his head over at me, then lolled back as he grabbed his drink from the stand by the sound system and took a long draught, crushing it after he’d finished it. He let out a long, satisfied sigh. “I don’t fucking care what either of you think, honestly. I’m not here to play drama shit. I’m here to do what Jack wants. And what Jack wants, is for a member of his group to listen to him. Got it? You’re his.”

“I don’t remember signing a contract.”

“You signed a contract when you agreed to join this godforsaken cult, got it? You belong to me, I belong to Jack, we all belong to fuckin’ Jack. So, get your scrawny ass to the basement. I’ll lead you there if I have to. But that’s where we’re going.”

“What about Dean, or Jesse? Raymond?” I tried to argue against the loud noise that made it difficult to hear myself think. “They helped to summon the demon. Shouldn’t they get some of this praise, o-or whatever?” I bit my tongue harder at the sound of the stammer. It was difficult enough to have a conversation with someone like this. It was worse that Dean was still there, still being ignored by everyone else at the party, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. Maybe he was an ass, maybe he was annoying, and maybe he didn’t know when to quit, but the poor guy had a cut opened up on the side of his cheek that looked like it needed stitches.

“They didn’t finish the spell. You did. That’s all Jack cares about.” He set down the broken cup, and started walking away. “If you don’t follow, I can’t guarantee your safety. Jack doesn’t like not being listened to.”

“Jack sounds like an asshole!” Calce called back. But he didn’t even glance in our direction to see if we were following. I took a deep breath, looked one last time at Dean sprawled out on the floor, then started walking after the disappearing form of Corey as he shrugged his way through the crowd. They parted for him without so much as a glance his way. Everyone was so oblivious, like it was nothing. It was as though he wasn’t even a part of everything that went on around him. I’d never been to a party before but I couldn’t believe people wouldn’t care, that they would be so ignorant to people in need of help.

Calce grabbed my arm. “You’re just gonna do what he says?” she hissed. “You’re playing into his hand.”

I shrugged. “That’s what I came here for, right? There’s no hand to play for.”

“This has something wrong with it, I can smell it in the air. You shouldn’t follow him. We should get out of here.” I wrenched her hand away from me, wrinkling my nose.

“That’s what you said before, and I still think it sounds like bullshit. Maybe he’s right, and I’m the one that matters here.” I tried to sound confident, but even I had to admit, that sounded less like the Dean I was trying to emulate, and more like his brother.

“Open your eyes, Andrew.” She refused to let go, and instead pulled me against her. I found myself knocked out of my thoughts completely. It was too easy for her. She pressed herself up against me, grabbing my glasses and positioning them firmly on my face. “Actually SEE for once.” Her form was warm, almost hot and her eyes were captivating, even as I found myself shivering. “See what’s happening here. I know psychopaths when I see them. I am one. But there’s something missing from him. That guy, it’s like there’s nothing there.” She stared earnestly at me, waiting for me. She was too close.

I stared at her fearfully for another moment, then closed my eyes as I tried to feel what she felt. That off smell. Something that you couldn’t quite place, something that refused to go unnoticed, and yet implacable and untouchable when you reached out to grab it. It was just… Wrong. Whatever was happening here, there was something wrong. It didn’t sit right in my stomach. I bit my lip, then sighed and opened my eyes, only to move away when she had pressed herself even closer than before. I didn’t want to be that close to those teeth. “Okay. You’re right. There’s something off. There’s something going on that even I can feel at this point. But this is what we’re here for, and I want to see it through. I have you to protect me, right?” I smiled tentatively. “So I’ll be okay, whatever happens.” I pulled away. “We’ll be alright.”

She faltered. Her face seemed to change in the haze of flashing lights. I almost thought she blushed, but it must have been a trick of light. She grinned back as she seemed to compose herself. “’Course. I can take anything. We’ll be fine.”

“Let’s go, then.” I squeezed her hand, and raced after Dean’s older brother.

“You know, I don’t like this new Andrew,” she said offhandedly as we tried to wade through a clique of girls taking shots. “He’s way too stubborn. Sometimes gives me a run for my money.”

“Well, it’s either that, or I run out the door,” I grinned.

“Is that such a bad idea?”

“You wanted to go to this party.”

“That was before I realized it just reeked of some kind of strange fuckery. Hey, wait.” She stopped outside the basement door, her eyes narrowing. She gripped my hand until it hurt. “… It gets worse here.”

“Well, that’s where we have to go. Corey’s waiting for us. And Jack. I’ll be on guard. You do the same.”

“… Fine, but I don’t have to like it.” I pulled the bronze handle of the old wooden door open, to a rush of cool air. Inside began a set of stone stairs that looked like they had been hewn out of the foundation of the building itself. Old, dripping from water that must have been leaking from faulty copper pipes, they extended down into darkness and dotted light that I couldn’t quite place. Wherever the source was, it was too deep for me to get a good look at it. Thankfully there was a handrail that I gripped as I started the descent. The faint sound of voices grew from below as I left the music. Male voices, the soft whispers of trying to keep silent as the party transpired above them. My arms prickled into gooseflesh.

Calce rushed past me in a huff to take the lead in front. “How am I supposed to protect you if you’re the one going headlong into danger?” She called back, and began to walk slowly down the stone steps. She was almost tentative, her entire body bristling. Something had her on edge, something even I could feel. “Let me stake it out. I’ll be first.”

“Fine,” I said. My mind was too hazy, stuck in fear and apprehension to argue. That feeling was getting worse. My heart beat rose to my throat the further we descended. I’d left the door open for illumination on the steps, yet the music seemed to leave us beside the further we separated from the party. It was oddly silent in the dark gloom of the subterranean basement. I remembered this feeling. The thing that seemed to want to drive me away. I’d felt it before, so strangely familiar to my mind that tried desperately to be pragmatic. When I’d joined them, this stupid cult. I remembered the words, the attempt to bring us to agree to anything out of fear. I remembered taking the piss out of it before. I remembered thinking it was all a joke. But now… It permeated my senses. I was afraid, no matter how much I tried to keep myself thinking logically.


	9. Feeling Lucky, Punk?

“I don’t like this,” Calce called out ahead of me. Her voice bounced off of the dripping old stone around us. I shivered.

“I know. You’ve said that multiple times,” I tried to sound upbeat, but I still managed to stutter.

“No, I mean it, Summoner. Something’s wrong.”

“You’ve also said THAT multiple times. You’re not making this any easier for me too, you know.” The smell of something coppery reached my nose, and my nostrils curled as I began to breathe through my mouth. “I don’t like this anymore than you do.”

“We could leave. Just go now, not come back.”

“We can’t,” I muttered.

“Why?”

“We just… We can’t.” I had gone this far. I wanted to see it through. A small piece of what logic I had left kept yelling at me over and over. I had no reason to be afraid. This was stupid. This was all stupid. I couldn’t let myself get sidetracked in a fantasy. There was the real world to consider. But the real world, I had to remind myself, wasn’t as real as I wanted it to be.

“Andrew?” I jumped, my breath hitching as I realized I’d made it to the last step and had anticipated another. I looked up for the source of the disembodied voice, and stared in shock at the huddled group of hooded figures. The dotted lights that flickered in the din of the basement were the torches that a few of them held in gloved palms. Behind them I could vaguely catch the brick and mortar walls of the old house foundations. They were covered in symbols etched out in what looked like charcoal, with more of them on the ground in front of them. It formed a circle, with a symbol in the middle I could almost make out as an incredibly elaborate pentagram. But there was writing on it I didn’t recognize, cuneiform runes that must have been from some ancient language.

“Yes?” I asked the disembodied voice. I looked between each individual figure and tried to pick out faces. Even the faces I did catch, I didn’t recognize. They must have belonged to the frat.

“Welcome.” The same voice called from the darkest corner of the room. He came into focus slowly, his long lanky frame flickering and distorting in the strange light of the room. Finally, I could see him clearly. I felt Calce pressing up against my back as I finally got a good look at the leader of this whole thing. Brown eyes, brown hair, nothing special or defining about him. He wore a blazer from his university, a pair of jeans, and kept his hands stuffed in his pockets. That changed when he rushed out to meet me. His hand clasped mine in a hearty handshake, the other grasping my shoulder in a kind of half hug of someone meeting an old friend. His eyes gleamed in the flickering light, and along with it was the flash of a too-white smile. It didn’t reach his eyes either.

“My name’s Jack,” he grinned. “I’ve heard so much about you, Andy. Can I call you Andy? Great name, Andrew, but Andy, now that’s a friends’ name. It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“I’d prefer just Andrew, thanks,” I heard myself say. It didn’t sound nearly as confident as I wanted it to be. But then, it was difficult to sound confident surrounded by cultists in a dank basement of an early twentieth century estate. I twitched every time I heard the sound of dripping water. The flames danced off every surface, changing it into a flickering and moving world at the edge of my vision. It reflected strangely off my glasses to the point I found it difficult to see.

“Andrew? Fine, that’s alright too. So, I’m guessing you’re a little confused by the décor?” He waved a hand behind him at the audience that watched us like silent statues. “It’s just my pals and I, we’ve got this little project we’ve been working on for the past while, you know? I wanted to get some more people to join, so I had them looking for initiations around town and I have to say, I’m pleased they found you. I’m guessing you’ve heard enough from good old Corey and his brother about us, so I don’t want to talk your ear off about the basics or anything. If you got any questions feel free to let me know.”

“… Yeah,” I managed, but he launched once again into another burst of words before I could even think to ask him anything.

“So, you’re telling me, that in about a week of this organization, you got yourself summoning a bonified, no-possession-needed demon? Without the help of anyone to complete the spell, and even then, only four people required for it to even happen in the first place?” He clucked his tongue and tightened his grip on my shoulder. I found myself whirled around to face the circle. “See, that’s the kind of initiative I like to see. Ain’t that right, Corey?” He gave a thumbs up to one of the figures, and one of them nodded. “Exactly. That’s talent, my friend, real talent and that’s one special thing about humans that you can’t teach. No matter how many times I try. It’s just a part of you. On the inside, like that alien movie.” He poked my chest. “Right here. Heart. Or maybe your stomach, I don’t fucking know with that Christian witchcraft mumbo-jumbo.” He grinned back at Calce, and I took the opportunity to look back nervously at her unmoving form. “Isn’t that right, demon? No one really knows how any of this shit works, not even you. We’re always in the dark, having to deal with whatever the inquisition didn’t burn and even that is a bunch of propaganda we have to dig through and glean. Dig through that Christian guilt and look for the daddy Devil’s answers.”

Calce was standing as still as the others, but in the dark haze I could see her eyes reflecting the torchlight. They were trained on Jack, statuesque, and unblinking. Her lips were curled back faintly, and her entire expression was warped in a wordless snarl. I could see the strain on her body. She wanted to attack. She desperately wanted to rip him to pieces. She was following my orders, but everything in her body was telling her not too.

“Calce, it’s okay, don’t attack-” I began, but Jack interrupted with a chuckle.

“Well, now that’s a well-trained demon if ever I saw one.” He turned me back to face her and lilted his head forward until it was level with mine. I was afraid to tense up my body, for fear he might try to get violent. “She’s really something, isn’t she? A fire demon, in the real, hellish flesh. Look at her. I’ve never seen a specimen like that before. So much could be proven by her. All this time, possessed creatures are left to the annals of history, with the excuses of them being a psychosis related incident or some kind of parental abuse but her, well, you can’t explain something one hundred percent demon away.”

“Who are you?” I blurted out. With one motion I finally found the strength to tear myself away from him. I hurled myself back towards Calce, and like her, kept my gaze on him. He looked so normal, so average, so… Human. Everything about him was carefully rendered to appear like the average joe. But the feeling inside my stomach grew the closer I got to this basement, to the point that when he touched me, I wanted to swallow my own tongue. I could still feel his hand on mine after he had shaken it. He was anything but normal.

“I already told you kid, my name’s Jack.” He smiled. “I’m just a frat dude like the rest of ‘em. I even helped with your initiation.”

“No,” I stammered. “There’s something wrong with you. Calce senses it. I do too. And the way you’ve been talking – that’s not human. You’re not even trying to sound human.”

“Senses? Since when do you care about sensing things? Corey told me you were pretty logical, right? Why else would a pastor’s boy join something so satanic if he didn’t believe in any of it? Unless he was trying to prove something.” He shrugged. “Or both, I don’t judge. But there ain’t nothing to sense here.” He scratched his head. His movements seemed so normal, so genuine. And yet, I knew what a carefully orchestrated façade was. I’d dealt with enough of it at home, having to do it myself. He was lying.

“You’re not human,” I breathed.

“Not human? What are you-“ He and I shared a look. His nervous smile dropped then, and his eyes seemed to change in the gloom. They retained their color, yet grew colder in less than a blink of an eye. Instead of his oh so human grin, his mouth slowly rose, until it curled into a strange and uncanny snarl of a smirk. He looked just as animal as Calce.

“I guess there’s no point playing that game,” he muttered.

“What are you?” I demanded. Calce brushed up against my side as she moved closer to the front. I was almost regretting telling her not to do anything.

“I’m still Jack,” he reasoned. “I’m just me.” He shrugged. “But, I guess I’m a little different than you. Guess you got that talent of yours to blame for feeling it the way that you do.” He sighed. “Should have known. But Andy, you gotta understand it, right? You and I are the same. You found out something brand new that you had no idea existed before. Everything you ever heard about said that it wasn’t real, that it was pop culture, that it was all for some kind of entertainment. I heard from Corey that you like horror movies. You like the monsters in those right? Right?” His eyes gleamed. Even when he wasn’t trying anymore, he still spoke like a salesman. “They’re real. Almost all of ‘em.” I gulped, unsure of how much to even bother believing. “The Exorcist? A good movie. Really, one of the best. Not exactly the truth though. See, you can’t catch a demon like you would the common cold. I’m sure there’s some kind of exception, but that wasn’t my case.” He scratched the back of his head again. Every time he moved, Calce twitched. “It’s a little more complicated, and that makes it harder for the rest of us. We gotta wait until there’s some kind of sorry soul that tries to summon us themselves, and then it’s a tossup to what we get. Jack, the poor guy, he got me.”

“You’re…”

“A demon,” he finished. He took a step closer, his movements almost uncannily awkward. “Poltergeist, really. Little thing, not much strength, but hell of a lot of smarts wrapped up in there. If I do say so myself. This is my body now. Jack is still here, of course. Somewhere. But that was months ago. Months for the human portion to accept that I was going to help him accomplish the great things that his book had promised him. Picked it up from his university’s library, saw great things in the pages, thought, why not see if I can get myself a little extra wealth to pay off tuition? Anyone would make that choice. But, see, Jack was special. Like you. He managed to get me all on his own. But he didn’t have that little extra oomph to get himself something as special as your familiar. He couldn’t afford it. And with no animal around for me to possess like some kind of dirty dog, I took him. And he, became me. So now I’ve got this human skin.” He laughed, dancing back to the circle and grabbed the cloaked Corey by the shoulder. “Look at me! All human, and yet so much more! I heal faster than anything, I got my own little repertoire of powers, and I still got all these friends from the frat that trust me! Their own leader!”

I stared as he tossed back Corey’s hood, grabbing the man by the throat, and gave him a big, sloppy kiss. Corey stared blankly at him, as though Jack wasn’t there. He continued to hold his torch, unwavering. “Man! I can’t do that when I’m a poltergeist now can I? It’s great. I can touch anything, kill anything I want. You get drunk on this power, you know? I know how much you like killing, fire demon.” He pointed at Calce with a playful lopsided grin and laughed. “It’s great, right? So freeing. I heard about Peter Michaels. Great kill, really. That massacre, man!” He cried. “That carnage! I’m kind of jealous, that level of power. Makes me shiver.”

I choked. “How-”

“Oh please.” He waved a hand dismissively. “That was such a sloppy cover up that a baby would have noticed something was off. I did you a favor, helped guide the police on the track of an animal mauling, and now you’re fine. But I knew Andrew. From the very beginning, I knew there was some new player in town.” His smile darkened, but an instant later he had snapped to his enthusiastic self. “So, anyways, I see I got all these friends, I see how I got these, these bodies.” He gestures around at the others. “And I think to myself, hey. I got dreams. I got ideas. I got this determination. This, this chutzpa – real nice Yiddish word that one – and I think to myself, you know I got all these people, and I really could do something with them. I got my human’s talent and willpower for summoning demons, and I got all these fresh souls and bodies to take over, so why not raise an army, right?”

“Is that what you’re going to do to me?” I called out. He faltered, letting go of Corey. Shoving him back with the others, he slowly turned to me, his smile falling.

“What?”

“Is that what you’re intended to do to me, and the others? That’s why you brought me down here, right? To tell me your evil plan, and then take everything over? You gotta kill me to get rid of her.”

He slowly grinned again, shaking his head as he walked over to me. “Oh, Andy.” Calce couldn’t fight, so she was forced to step to the side as he grabbed my shoulder and patted my head a little too roughly. I wanted to say something. I wanted her to do something. But my jaw was clenched shut. I couldn’t stand to be near him. “Andy, Andy, Andy, I wouldn’t do that to you, kid. You, my friend, are my ace in the hole.” He rocked my shoulders back and forth as he chanted my name, then kissed my forehead with a flourish. I made a face, taking another step back. He didn’t seem to mind, being so swept up in the sound of his own voice. “You’re the yin to my yang, the Bonnie to my Clyde! Without you, I don’t think I would have even been able to consider the level of how much more I could do! Your power, your sheer willpower to summon this thing-” he pointed a finger at Calce. “That is something truly special. I didn’t even think I’d find someone like you, and to think!” He laughed. “The pastors’ boy is the one with the knack for demon summoning! Irony like that brings a tear to my eye. No, I’m not going to get a friend of mine to possess you. That’d be such a waste. Why would you try to spray paint solid gold the color green? The whole reason I’m telling you this in the first place, is because I don’t want us to hate each other. I want us to be friends, you know? I want you to trust me. And maybe, over time, you might even come to love me. We’d be leaders, together.”

“How the hell do you figure that?” Calce finally growled. Jack turned his lopsided grin on her.

“Well, well. The familiar speaks. I thought you were just eye candy.”

“Yeah yeah fuck you gremlin tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Hey now, I’m not here to fight.” He raised his hands above his head. “I’m not even here to take your Summoner away from you. I’m just here to offer a deal. You know about deals, right? I ain’t no devil, but maybe that’s for the best. I offer even better terms.” Her eyes narrowed, unconvinced. I wasn’t feeling much more trusting than her. “Listen. If I take over this town, maybe the city, maybe the world, I’m going to need the key to summoning the most powerful demons in the universe. That key is Andrew. And if I want Andrew to help me, then I gotta play nice. And I fully intend to. I’m going to give this kid anything he wants. Pamper him. All the pussy, dick, whatever he’s into, I don’t care. Keep Andrew happy, that’s my number one goal here. And you want Andrew happy, don’t you?” He voice crooned.

“I’m just doing a job,” she growled.

“A job? Hey, you don’t need to be like that. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? And I know you’re going above and beyond with your job here.” He smirked. “Hey sweetie, tell me. What’s your name?”

“Calce.”

“A good lie,” he nodded. “A very good one.”

“It’s the truth, dumbass.”

“Now, now, you don’t have to lie to me.” He put his hand over his heart. “You and me, we’re like brother and sister down there. We’re all family. And you and I both know that names have power. I get it, lying to humans and only telling them a piece of your name. I won’t ask for more. But I am asking you to be truthful with me as to the true position of your job.” He pointed at her, then steered his hand over to me. “You’ve been googling this shit, right?”

“I-I-“

“Good. So you know that she’s a familiar. Or something along those lines – it gets fuzzy. But what you might not have noticed, or maybe you didn’t try to, is that demons are supposed to be… You know…” He wiggled his fingers. “Evil. Bad. Trying to complete their contract, bring you to hell. But what I hear, is that after that little escapade with Peter Michaels, we had “Calce” comforting you in your time of need.”

Calce went rigid. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“You’re soft, demon. Soft enough that a little boy like this is ordering you not to lay a hair on me, and you’re just following along. You don’t have to. It’s not a part of the contract. You could kill me – you know as well as I do that I’m a danger to your Summoner more than he could ever know. Some kind of override, but again, that shit gets messy. But you’re not. And for that, I’m inclined to want to keep you around too.” His grin widened, and without turning around he waved at his followers. In the gloom of the fire I watched them kneel to light the candles at each point of the pentagram, and a quiet chanting in a language I didn’t know began to fill the room. They spoke clearly, at the same time, like robots.

Jack didn’t miss a beat. “I want both you, together, with me. Because obviously Andy over here is in a class of his own, charming demons to do what they ask. I mean, come ooon.” He waved his hands emphatically. “A fire demon that LISTENS? Who ever heard of such a thing? This shit, this is what I live for. I’m high on life! I’m here for it!”

“I’m not joining you.”

“Sorry?” His eyes narrowed. “Come again?”

“I’m not joining you, or any of this.” I glared at him. The sound of the group was growing steadily louder. “I don’t want to be a part of this. Whatever plans you’ve got, I never signed up for anything. I never wanted to have a demon. I’m stuck with Calce now, but I have no intention of going further in than I already am. I’m just a kid, like you say. I got my whole life ahead of me, a-and I’m not about to let someone like you push me around.” I tried to take a shaky breath. “Calce was right. We should never have come here. I didn’t mean to walk into a sales-pitch for the apocalypse. I guess I can cross that one off my bucket list.” She followed my orders because she wanted to. She did what I asked because she liked me. I may not have known her for long, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to listen to him over her. We should have run a long time ago in the other direction.

“Well then.” Jack paused, scratching his head. “Well, you – you see that’s not what I expected to hear. You’re a man of intellect, Andrew. I thought you’d be smarter than that.”

“What do you mean?” As I spoke, the circle began to glow. The lines of the pentagram changes from charcoal black, to a blinding white that ripped into the stone flooring, then spread out until the entire circle was white. The chanting grew louder, and the familiar dark red of the depths of hell filled in where the white had been before, coloring the room in a dim brimstone glow. It smelled even worse than the basement had beforehand, the scent of sulfur extending in tendrils from the portal that had opened in front of us. Wind began to pick up as the circle swirled with strange untameable power, but none of the occultists were going to be swayed. The pentagram around them disappeared completely, and only the vortex of hell remained at the edge of their feet. Faintly, I heard the sound of cackling, of gnawing teeth and cracking bones, as creatures began to slowly rise out of the creation. Wisps, clouds, and shadows slowly began to emerge. They found it difficult with nothing to latch on and but worked tirelessly to try to escape the hellscape below.

“I mean, that you’re on the losing side. I was here to extend an olive branch and give you a chance to help me, with the added benefit of leaving you untouched by my plan. But now, it seems you’re going to have to end up just like rest of them. What a waste, really.” He turned, stumbling back to the circle, and peered inside with a grin. He was handed a book from one of the cultists, and pawed through it with more emphatic nodding. “Wonderful work. Make sure to aim this shit right up the stairs. We got hundreds of fresh bodies.”

“No…” I muttered. “Calce.”

“Fuck’s sake,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let me do something. Let me shut him up. Kill him right now. I want him gone.”

“It wouldn’t stop them.” I looked at each of the individual cultists, their faces lit up by the hellish glow. All of them were stone faced. “They’re all possessed, every one of them. If we’re going to do this, we need to kill the source.”

“What are you talking about back there?’ Jack skewed his head back with a grin. “You reconsider? Now that you see your life flashing before your eyes and all that?” In his hands the book shone as a beacon, the words inside glowing just as the circle did, wavering in light as the circle grew lighter and dimmed. The cackling of the evil creatures inside grew louder, skeletal bodies and ghost like shapes trying their damndest to rise out of the circle.

“Get the book, and smash it,” I muttered.

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” She launched herself at the possessed man with a blood curdling screech that matched the sounds of the evil spirits below. It made my blood run cold. She was as inhuman as the rest of them.

Jack was sent spiraling to the side of the circle with a hiss, the wind getting knocked out of him. He tried to punch her, but she gripped the arm like it was nothing. An ancient crate whipped itself at her head, but it missed her by several inches. “BITCH!” He raised his arms with a shout for the others to help him in a bid to protect his face, but he was mistaken in what Calce was aiming for. She ripped the book out of his other hand with a growl, then jumped away before he could try throwing other things at her. The other crates he telekinetically whipped at her hit their targets, but they were too late.

The creatures in the center of the circle were rising, growing and changing, into monstrous looking things that reminded me of dogs with three heads, women with jaws too wide to use, and alien creatures with large heads and long fingernails that dug into the sides of the portal. They were clouds, thoughts of creatures more than the creatures themselves, and all of their eyes were trained on me. The cultists didn’t even seem to notice them. Only I could see the unholy abominations that the rest of them didn’t flinch at it. The black figures with bloody eyes that seeped into flesh as black as darkness itself, digging themselves out and starting to make their way towards me. They were going to take me first, then everyone outside this door.

Calce rose with the book in hand, and a wide grin. “You know Jack, you’re a fucking dumbass.” Her hand clenched tight around the book, so hard it was like she was trying to crush it in her hands. Then a flame appeared, first on her knuckles, then in a whoosh of sparks and burning energy the rest of her first was a fiery wisp. The book caught with it, and the dry thing from Jack’s university library was nothing more than kindling.

“NO!” Jack screamed, an unearthly, ethereal noise. “You don’t understand what you’ve done!” He rose to grab at the book with wild eyes shining insanely in the light of the hell portal. But it was nothing more than ashes. She let them drop in her hands, with a smirk that widened further to reveal her shark teeth.

“Pretty sure I just saved everyone.”

“No, you fucking idiot. You just killed them all!”

“Calce,” I said apprehensively, watching as the portal began to shift in size. The creatures inside were hissing, but not in the intimidating satisfaction of being released. They were in pain, falling back into the portal with twisted expressions of agony etched on their faces. The portal itself jostled and changed.

Without a book, the cultists looked between each other uncertainly. The portal was growing too bright, and the world around us began to shake with it. “What is this?” I demanded at Jack. My heartbeat was pounding again.

“Your hubris,” he snarled back. He shoved Calce away, and ran up the stairs. He pushed me out of the way too, and that look of terror on his face was one I’d never forget. If he was afraid, if even he couldn’t solve this, then…

“Calce, I think we should g-get going as well,” I said nervously, taking one step back, then another, then turned on my heels with a whimper as the shaking from the portal grew exponentially. The light from the portal was blinding, illuminating the entire basement as though the sun had reached its depths. Everything was prickled in fire, growing so hot that it was hard to touch the banister. It was suffocating from the pain of trying to breathe, and with every step I tried to climb I could feel my strength waning. Whether it was from the massive staircase and I hadn’t ever tried to work on cardio, or from whatever supernatural phenomenon I was in the midst of, I couldn’t tell. My arms had turned to jelly, and my shoes felt like they were melting with every step I forced my body to take. The cultists were running after me, but I could barely hear them among the rumbling. Wherever they were, they were far behind. But the noise was only a symptom of the growing shaking that made it impossible to scale the stairs. The dust lifted from the quaking of the entire house, catching in little puffs of smoke and spark as the fire looked for anything to catch onto. I was only halfway, and I wasn’t going to make it. The handrail was radiating heat, the stairs illuminated in a bright glow of fire that was so hot it was white instead of red.

I was being cooked alive.

“I’m here, Summoner.”

Her voice was right at my ear. A set of hands grabbed me, and I found myself pressed up against Calce’s form with my face hidden from view of the world around me. My legs lifted. I felt like I was floating, but I could almost breathe. The smell of blood permeated everything. There was nothing in my ears, nothing but the rumbling of the world slowly beginning to crash down around us. It beat into my chest unlike any music could. It was shaking to the core of our beings, and even that, I could barely breathe through. The house wouldn’t be able to remain standing, not with something like this that had no end to it.

I felt the jostling of running, and vaguely realized that Calce was carrying me. Her hands held onto my form tightly, gripping me securely with no room to jostle around.

Screams tore through the rumbling, but even they were drowned out soon enough. We’d made it past the stairs, but it was only getting worse. The plumes of fire sent everything into a smoking mess around us. Everything that could catch on fire, did. I could smell burning flesh, whimpers and cries of fear and agony, the screams of drunken college and high school kids that were too wasted to understand what was happening or look for an exit. And the acrid scent of the singing of my own flesh that Calce protected me from with her own body. The worst of it, I was safe from. But even I could feel that oppressive heat, that grew and grew like an oven heating to its highest setting. No, like the sun had been brought into the basement of the house.

The first explosion went off, and Calce stumbled. It rocked the entire house, and it didn’t go back to its original position this time. The entire world felt slanted. The next explosion hit, and my ear drums popped. I couldn’t hear anything then. But I knew that the world was crashing around us. The house was burning, breaking, and collapsing.

The next thing I knew, I was on my back, my eyes wide open and staring ahead at the starry sky. 

The world was spinning. Lights in the night above me flickered and turned into streaks in my vision. My glasses had a crack in them that ripped a star in half. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, and my breath came in ragged tatters. I clutched at something, but I couldn’t feel my hands. My head was lolled back from the force of the explosion, and my head pounded. Everything hurt, tensed and shaking. Heaving, I felt a form on me. Something warm, and heavy. I glanced down, and stared at her.

Calce. Her eyes nearly glowed as bright as the ruins around us. She heaved as much as I did, her hands bracing the pavement on either side of me. Our faces were inches apart, her tie lying against my chest. She was shaking. Sitting over me, using her own body to keep the last of the debris from hitting my prone form. She was shivering. Achingly shaking from what she had just done for me. She had saved my life, and now we were here, staring at each other and trying to comprehend something, anything to make sense of it all. Neither of us could speak. Neither of us knew what to so. Neither of us cared to. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I couldn’t feel a thing.

Something stupid entered my head.

I was in love with her.

She waited for her breath to calm, her body giving one more shake from the rush of moving, before slowly pulled herself off of me. In the light of the fire, her cheeks looked faintly red.

It really was a stupid idea, thinking something like that. My brain was moving a mile a minute, blood rushing inside my head as it tried to process what had just happened and found it couldn’t. I was too muddled to make sense of anything. The last thing I needed right now was finding some kind of demon attractive.

She held out a hand to me, but I could only stare at her. Confusion. Utter confusion as the cynicism vanished in a puff of smoke. This girl saved me, and her eyes were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

“Come on,” she said. “Get up.”

I don’t think I could if I tried. “I… You saved my life.” I flushed, then coughed as I felt how uncomfortably hot my lungs were. Everything was hot. I must have inhaled too much smoke.

“Yeah, that’s my thing,” she grinned, and the shark teeth brought my back to the present. No, I was just going insane. I was trying to put romantic feelings on an inhuman creature. Even if that creature seemed to be going out of her way to help me. Which was appreciated, and somewhat questionable, but I couldn’t get swept up in that notion. Not to mention my brain decided now was the best time to stop functioning. Maybe I shouldn’t be shutting everything down. Maybe I should have gone home by now. I thought I might have hit my head a little too hard against the pavement, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. The world wasn’t spinning, but it was certainly brighter than it should have been. “Now, come on. Let’s get out of here.” 

“But…” I couldn’t feel my legs, except for where she had been sitting on me moments ago. That area was almost uncomfortably warm.

Damnit, now I was back to a stupid topic.

The sound of crashing behind us made me flinch. I looked behind her, and my eyes widened. And everything in my mind drained away. 

The world was fire. Everything, from the ruins of where the house had stood moments before, to the greenery of the trees surrounding it, was burning in a massive ball of orange and red flame. It reached to the very tips of the tall slanted ruins that had once been the steeples of the house, streaking up into the night sky. They were at an impossible angle, pointing back into the forest as the flames licked up the easily caught old and rotting wood. It took with it the dry underbrush of the surrounding forest, sending tunnels of flame down into the darkened woods, but struggled to pull the green and living into its ruin. The cars in front had been overturned in the explosions, and left nothing but burning carnage that spread in a fan. It nearly reached the two of us. Bits of rubble ranging from the size of a pin to the size of a brick managed to make it all the way out to where Calce had brought me, some hundred feet away from the destruction. A single wheel of a tire meandered its way through the debris, until it stopped nearby and the flames on it burned away at the rubber.

The fire lit up the night sky like a pyre. The house was unsalvageable. The smell of burning rubble, wood, and fleshed reached my senses and overwhelmed them. The sheer wall of the flames was so thick, one couldn’t pick out the house itself from the fireball. There were no bodies in the rubble, no one that had even made it out alive. There was nothing but their funeral pyre that danced across the night sky. The flames were too large to pick apart the ruins of windows, and the bodies inside. I couldn’t see the hands, the arms, the limbs that turned to nothing but ashes and bone.

No screaming anymore. It was nothing but the roar of the fire.

No one had survived.


	10. You Ever Just Kill Half the Student Body?

“Andrew.” I stood up on unsteady legs, staring at the destruction. I hadn’t realized… I never thought… 

“Andrew, get back, it might still explode.” I tried to take a step, but stumbled back onto the harsh cracked concrete. The stones digging into my palms were nothing. I didn’t feel like I existed anymore. Above me, the stars shone, uncaring of the flames. They slowly began to go out, one by one, as the black smoke around us took over the sky. “Andrew.” Dean was still inside. Jesse. Raymond. Everyone. They’re were still in there, burning away to nothing. I’d killed my friends. I’d killed everyone. It was me. My fault. 

I tried to get up again, but there was something holding me back. I turned back numbly, and stared at the hand that clenched my arm. She was digging gravel out of my wounds with a worried look in her eyes. She felt so far away from me now. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. 

“You can’t go back in.” Calce forced me to meet her eyes. “You can’t save them. They’re gone. All of them.” She didn’t seem real. Her voice was in some kind of tunnel, and I could barely hear it.

“No.” I heard myself mutter. I turned back around, and tried to take another step. The heat of the fire reached my face. It baked at my skin, burning so hot it was like I was at the center of it all. At least then I could feel something. 

“They’re GONE!” She hissed, drawing me back just as another explosion rocked the world around us. The ground under the both of us shook, like the earth was sighing after what we had done. It was an aftershock; but that didn’t mean the power behind it wasn’t enormous. It was a struggle to stay on my feet, especially when I couldn’t feel them. 

I was in her arms again, Staring at the darkened road behind us. She wouldn’t let me look. I had to look. I had to see what I had done to them.

“I did this.” 

“You didn’t. Jack did. Not you. He would have possessed everyone in that godforsaken house if it wasn’t for us. You didn’t even know this would happen, and neither did I.” Her hands clenched tighter. I tried to remember that feeling that had existed just a second ago. But it felt numb in her arms. “Don’t think of it that way.” 

“Everyone’s dead.” 

“Not you.” She glared up at me. “You need to snap out of it, and get back home. I hear sirens.” 

“They’re gone,” I muttered, staring through her. 

“Damnit Andrew, don’t make me carry you.” I looked down at the demon. This had to be a terrible dream. I was going to wake up, and be late for school. She couldn’t be real. None of this could be real. 

“Why?”

“Why what?” 

“Why did you… Why are you trying to help me? It’s not your job.” That wasn’t the question I wanted to ask. But I didn’t want to tell her she shouldn’t have saved me. That I should be burning with the rest of them for what I had done. My decision. My choice.

I looked back at the manor, my haunted eyes reflecting the fire. I couldn’t see as well anymore. There were tears. I wasn’t crying, but the smoke was too much. I was too numb to cry. I didn’t think I could if I tried. 

“I’m not having this conversation right now. We need to go.” The world upturned as she picked me up again and began running. 

I stared at the stars. No matter how far we left the scene, the smoke seemed to travel along the night sky, following us. We brushed by trees, took paths I didn’t know, listened to the sound of crickets as the roaring of the flames faded to the utter silence of night. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. The smell. The sound. The sight that made me see it again, every time I closed my eyes. It was impossible to get out of my head. 

She was breathing harshly again. Her small form was working hard to get my useless body out of there. I was dead weight. After a while and who knew how many miles, she collapsed by a tree at the edge of an old road and lay me down by a sturdy trunk. My head lolled to the side, unable to find the strength to look at her. 

“Hell,” she muttered, standing unsteadily on her feet before crouching down beside me at the faint sound of sirens in the distance. The noise emanated like a ghostly wail. “You’re heavy.” I could hear her talk and knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the will to say it. I couldn’t open my mouth, or even look at her. I could only look ahead, seeing all the faces in my head that I’d never see again. She pressed up closer to me, worry in her eyes. “Andrew?” she gasped back at the air. I couldn’t respond. “Andrew.” She shook my shoulder, then hissed. “You can’t let the shock get to you. Snap out of it, come on.” She felt at my arm, then hissed again. “Damn, how can you be so cold after that? Burning and freezing at the same time, now that’s a talent…” She gritted her teeth. “Here.” 

I stared ahead as she unbuckled the last buttons off her coat and draped it around me, leaving nothing but her midriff and that ridiculous tie. My eye twitched. Somewhere through this haze, I felt myself struggling to react. The only girl I’d ever thought I could like, even for a second, stripping in front of me. She had nothing on but a beige tube top. I struggled to slowly turn my head around to her, staring through her. In a moment though, it was gone, and I was left back in this whirling vortex of grief I couldn’t process. Here I was, unable to be a typical teenage boy because I’d just inadvertently killed a hundred people. I was too far away to understand anything anymore. 

“You’re going to be okay.” She moved closer and slid onto my lap. She was light, but the sheer heat emanating from her body was almost overwhelming. Her face commanded my attention as she began stroking my hair rhythmically. “We’re going to go home, and you’re going to bed. And when you wake up tomorrow, it’ll be another day. The same as before.” She grinned a tentative smile. “That’s how it works, right? Tomorrow is another day.”

“They’re dead,” I coughed. My voice sounded alien to me.

She bit her lip. Blood trickled down from it, but it was already healing by the time she realized. Whatever wounds she’d gotten in the fire, they were already gone. “Yeah. They are.” She gripped my hand. It was oppressively hot on mine. “You have to get used to that. They’re gone.” Her grip tightened. “They’re not coming back. None of those people are. But it isn’t your fault.” She looked up at me, then folded my hand into my lap. “It’s Jack’s. Not ours. We did everything we could.” 

“They still died.” I was my fault. 

“Yeah. There’s no doubts about that.” She gripped my head gently. “You have to get over this mental hurdle, okay? Demons bring death with them. This world, it’s not a normal one. I know how humans are with this. You got be better than them. I know you’re afraid, I know it’s too much. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a fish or pet cat die. But this is bigger, and it’s harder. Its something you have to work through, slowly.” The sirens grew louder, and she flinched away from the source of the noise. “But we don’t have that time. For now, it’s best to… to…” She hissed to herself. “I don’t know, really. Just, accept it. As much as you can. And I’ll be here to help. With this, with that guy Peter before, with anything else we come across.” She watched me intently. “But you can’t shut down, okay? You can’t let something like survivor’s guilt get to you. I need you to be coherent, or the police will come to the scene of the crime, see what the hell happened and track it back to us. We don’t have Jack this time to play a hand in not getting caught.” 

“It’s not guilt.” I stared at her. She was crooked. Maybe it was the broken glasses. It was hard to speak. “I… I made the wrong call.” 

“What else could we have done?” She growled. “Killed Jack? It wouldn’t have changed anything. You were right back there, they would have gone through with their plans anyways. We acted fast, and we saved them from a worse fate, right?” 

“I…” I coughed harder, hacking up blackened phlegm. She gripped my hand like a vice until I lay back against the trunk.

She must have thought I was crying as my shoulder began to shake. I couldn’t believe it either. I was laughing. I had to laugh. It sounded more like a cough, and I ended up choking on my own tongue as I struggled to get the ash out of my lungs. “You…” I wiped my mouth. “You sound like I wished I did.” I closed my eyes. 

“What, like the new Andrew?”

“That was stupid,” I muttered. “So stupid.” 

“Yeah, it was. But here we are. Are you here with me yet?” She insisted, and held up my arm. “You gotten past it yet?” 

“How can I get past something like that?” I opened my eyes slowly. “All those…” My heart dropped. “I lost them, Calce. They’re gone. They’re not coming back. Because of my decision.” 

“They would have been lost anyways. And it’s too late. You can’t spend the rest of your life thinking about what could have been, okay?” She cupped my jaw with a free hand. 

“Death…” 

“Yeah. A lot of it.” She nodded insistently. “It happened. But you have to get used to it. You need to move past this.” 

I winced, and lay back against the tree, pulling her coat tighter around my shoulders. “… F-fuck this…” I stuttered. “How stupid could I be, thinking that was a good idea. We should never have come here.”

“I didn’t exactly stop you. I told you this would be a good idea, coming here. You can blame me if you want.” 

“I can’t blame you. You saved my life…”

She carefully stroked my cheek. “You’re still cold.” 

“I feel hot.” The numbing sensation was starting to fade the more she touched me. But in its place, everything felt too warm. It was like I’d gotten a bad sunburn, and my hands, my face, everything left exposed was overwhelmingly hot. “You’re hot.” I muttered, looking at her hand. 

She sighed. “You got singed by the fire. I saved you from most of it, but it’ll hurt for a while.” 

I hacked up another cough, and studied her again. “You’re not hurt.” 

“I am fire, Andrew.” She showed me her hand, and a little flame appeared. 

I reeled back with a whimper as flashes went through my mind, and she quickly doused it as she tried to steady me. “Sorry, sorry.” She grabbed my head as I struggled against her, and locked her forehead with mine. “Breathe.” 

I coughed, then took a long, slow draught of air. 

“Good. Keep breathing.” 

“Fucking don’t do that,” I choked. “Jesus Christ…” 

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Her touch calmed me down, but the memories were still there at the edges. She kept caressing my hair, moving her hand slowly, and slowly the images began to fade again.

“Fuck…” I sighed. “We just… That happened.” 

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“Not a dream.” 

“No.” 

“I don’t… I don’t even know what to do now,” I muttered. “How can I go back to school? Face my parents?” 

“Same way you did with Peter. Life continues on.” She looked over my form with a discerning eye. “You’re singed, but you’ll live. If we get you home soon, it’ll look like you’ve got a good alibi. You think your family noticed you were gone?” 

“Probably…” I sighed. “I don’t think they would have cared. What do you think the police will say?”

“Dunno. Some kind of terrorist plot, maybe? If you’re the lone survivor, they’ll ask questions.” She moved off of me, and stood up. She contemplated for a moment, then turned to me. “Do you think you’re okay to walk now?”

I gulped, and slowly rose to my feet. I could feel them now. They ached from the shuddering of the explosions. Or perhaps it was the shock. I had little strength to do much more than limp. “Yeah…” I muttered. “Yeah, I think so.” 

“Good. We’re going to take the forest. Can’t afford to be on the roads right now.” She looked back towards the now depleting sound of sirens. “I took us a ways out, so I don’t think they’ll be able to track us. We’re almost to your house.” 

I looked around at our respite and shivered. We were impossibly far out. In the middle of the forest, with no houses in sight, the world was dark, and that feeling of something watching me returned. The night was unnaturally dark with the smoke dotting out the stars. If Calce didn’t know where we were, I would have been hopelessly lost. 

“Great… The forest.” 

She grabbed my hand and started to tug me in a direction that seemed indiscriminate from any other. It was vaguely perpendicular to the sirens, but it could have been the opposite direction for all I knew, with the reverb of that noise. 

“Don’t worry. You’ve got me. Anything out there, I’ll protect you from.” 

I took a breath, then held her hand tighter and pulled her suit snugly around my shoulders.

“Easy for you to say. You’re not afraid of forests.” 

“I grew up around them,” she said from over her shoulder while continuing to bring me through the undergrowth that threatened to kick me shaking feet from under me. It sounded so off-cuff, her saying something like that. I let go of the cloak to push my glasses up, then grabbed at it again when it threatened to fall from my shoulders. It didn’t do much to help with the cold, but it was there. Protective. 

I squeezed Calce’s hand tighter. 

“Calce,” I finally said. 

“Yeah?” 

“Thanks, for saving me…” 

“It’s my job.” 

“It’s not, though.” I moved up closer, and nearly tripped on a root. “You listened to me. You’ve been comforting me. I didn’t… You’re the last person I’d ever expect to do something like that.” 

“Yeah yeah whatever.” She shrugged. 

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this, but I appreciate it.” I was struggling to think of what to say. If I should even bother trying to run after this thought process, or if I was imagining things in the heat of the moment. 

“You know this is all happening because of me, right?” she retorted. 

“No, I…” I trailed off. “You’ve made my life more… Interesting, to say the least.” I smiled tentatively. “Even if it has been a nightmare, you’re not the worst part of it.” She looked back at me, and grinned from ear to ear. My heart stuttered again, staring at those teeth. I was starting to wonder if that was fear.

“Well, I guess I can take that as a compliment.” 

“I guess I meant it as one.” I quieted down, and we went back to walking in silence. The world around us seemed to grow darker, and there was no end to the forest in sight. I could hear my heart beating, and feel the undergrowth biting away at my legs from under my jeans. The silence grew even still. The soft haunting noise of the sirens in the distance, and the snap of twigs under my shoes were isolated noises. I kicked up a bundle of leaves and choked back a noise when I heard the call of some animal I didn’t know. The silence grew louder still, until it became a steady roar in my ears. 

“Calce,” I eventually said. 

“Yeah?”

“I… I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to say your name.” 

“… How hard did you hit your head back there?”

“I don’t know.” I gave a watery smile when she looked back at me. “As hard as you let it?”

“Hey fuck off, I saved your ass,” she snorted, ducking her head under a pine branch. I wasn’t as coordinated and got it full on in the face. 

“Are you getting back at me by trying to kill me now?” I sputtered. 

“Accident. You need to get better hiking feet.” 

“Or maybe you could not lead me to getting hit in the face with a pine tree,” I murmured, but squeezed her hand tighter regardless. Somehow, I felt better. The silence was gone. I could focus on her voice. “So… You grew up in forests?” 

She didn’t look at me. “Yeah.” 

“I didn’t know demons could grow up.” Her hand loosened, but I gripped it tighter. She was avoiding me again.

“We’re almost home.” She nodded at the outcrop of trees that thinned out ahead of us. I could see a streetlight, and the tension in my shoulders faded. 

“You’re changing the subject,” I insisted. 

“You’re in no state to be asking complicated questions.” She pulled me ahead of her and onto the road doused in unnatural light. We were on my street, my house only a dozen feet away. I wasn’t sure how she’d managed it. It seemed like magic, somehow managing all the way around town through the forest. “Come on, we’re nearly there. You need sleep.” 

“I don’t want to sleep.” I turned back at her, but she rushed past me. I blinked as I reached out to catch her, but I didn’t have the strength. “I want answers.” I ran unsteadily after her. My body was in no shape, stumbling and nearly falling as I caught up to her. “I… It’s not fair, to not know things, when people died because of this demon bullshit. I need to know. I want to know. I have to.” I could prevent thing, I wanted to excuse myself. That I was doing this for others. That I didn’t have this cold search for knowledge deep inside. But it was there, digging away at the back of my mind. I would do anything to know more. 

“If you can’t handle people dying, what makes you think you can handle anything else?” She stood at the back of the house, looking up at the second window linked to my room. 

“I’m still standing.” 

“Barely. You look as pale as the dead.” She turned around at me, prodding me roughly in the chest, and I fell back a step in surprise. “Listen, Summoner. If you want to be a warlock, if you want to get all the answers you keep asking me about, you have to get used to this. Got it?” She looked up at me, her eyes flaring as I stared back at her. “This isn’t a game. People died tonight. A lot of them.” 

“I know,” I breathed. “I know.” 

“Dean is dead.” 

“I know.” 

“Your friends are gone.” 

“I knew them two weeks.” 

She smirked. “Good.” 

“I didn’t have any… Any connection.” I made a fist. “It… They didn’t deserve it, but… I didn’t know them.” 

“They used you.” My heart throbbed.

“Yes.” They could have been real. I hadn’t known them long enough. We could have been…

“Good.” She nodded again. “Don’t mourn them anymore than they need to be. Don’t make them martyrs. Don’t make them important, because they weren’t.” 

“Now, you tell me,” I interrupted. “Who you are, what you are.” She reared back slightly. 

“Here?” 

“Yes,” I insisted. “Here.” 

“But we still need to find a way into your house, don’t we?” 

“That can wait.” I glared at her. “You don’t want me to be afraid. So I won’t.” I could push it away. I could force all of it down if meant I could function. But that left a thirst, and I wasn’t going to leave it alone this time. Maybe I had to be cold. Maybe I had to let that part of my mind take over, if it meant I could stay standing. My body still shook, my mind kept trying to force its way back to what I’d seen, but I could fight back. I could sacrifice a piece of my humanity if it meant I could get answers. “Who are you?”

She looked at me, hissed, then looked back at my house. “… It’s hard to explain,” she said. “Human. Once. Hundreds of years ago.” She looked back at me. “I don’t know how other demons are made. But it’s how I came to exist. A girl made a deal for power with a devil, something that was never human and was little more than a concept. But…” She was searching for the words. “That girl was brought into hell, and was changed. That’s how I was born.” She took a step closer to me. I took one back. “I was made into a monster through the fires of hell. I’ve seen every part of that place. I know what’s in store for people who sin or sell their soul. Like you. I became a monster because a little girl wanted to be strong.” 

“How long?” I insisted, warily watching as she took another step towards me. 

“I’ll give you a hint. She spoke middle English.” She looked tired when she grinned, but her teeth still looked as dangerous as always. “Is that enough answers for tonight, Summoner? Can we sleep yet?” 

“Why do you play like you’re stupid?” 

“I am stupid.” She blinked at me, her smile failing. 

“No you’re not.” I closed the gap between us, and grabbed her by hair, tugging it back to stare at her firmly. It didn’t matter if my hands were shaking. I could push that down too. “You’re smart, and you hide it from me.” I looked at her desperately. “Calce. We don’t need to hide from each other. We don’t need to hate each other, or be cold. You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not.” I found myself smiling. “How are we supposed to trust each other if I’m afraid of you? How am I supposed to believe you if you keep lying?” She was frozen, transfixed by my eyes. 

Then she grinned. For once, it left me feeling relieved.

“You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you? I’ll do my best, Summoner.” She chuckled faintly. 

“Now,” I let her go awkwardly, rubbing the back of my neck. “How do we get to my room without alerting my family again?”

“On my back,” She laughed. “Come on. Let’s go.” 

“What?” She moved back for me and crouched, and tentatively I locked my arms around her neck. It couldn’t have been comfortable with the size difference, but she acted like carrying me on her back were nothing.

“Hell,” she muttered as she took a few more steps back to look up at the brick wall and my open window at the very top. “I’m going to regret this.” I pressed my face against her neck nervously. 

“Don’t drop me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I felt that whirl of air again as she rushed at the wall, then a sudden lurch as she jumped. She made it up several feet with that alone, but when she grabbed at the brick wall she still had a way to go. She hissed as she held on as tightly as she could, then began her ascent. 

“Are you-“ 

“Shut up!” she snarled. “Fucking hell- ow.” She left behind her a small trail of blood as her fingernails dug into the small chinks in the wall. She dug the brick under her nails and fingertips, searching for tiny pieces I would have never been able to use. She was breathing hard when she finally reached the window.

Calce rolled me off her back before she fell down into the room. This was the one time I was thankful for living in a small town. This house was so old, they didn’t even think to have bug screens. 

“Shit…” She fell onto the floor beside me in a huff. “I’m never doing that again.” 

“You did it, though.” I smiled faintly as I lay back on the floor. The wood felt so comfortable. Whatever energy had kept me going this far had all but disappeared, and my head slammed back against the wood with a muffled thud. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t thank me now. Thank me if the cops don’t end up at your door.” 

“You really think they’ll trail it back to me?” I asked nervously. 

“Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever happens, you won’t end up in jail.” 

“Maybe dead.” 

“I’d kill them first.” My stomach turned, but I pushed it back down. Death. I had to deal with death. It was going to happen. I couldn’t pretend that my life was normal anymore. It had taken days for me to realize that. 

I grimaced. I had spent all my life hiding behind scary stories and histories that didn’t belong to me. And now I was finally getting to experience something. I’d gotten my wish. 

My eyes fluttered closed. My breaths came in low, deep huffs. Maybe that shock was making me groggy. I found myself tired, even after all of that. It was a wonder I found it within myself to want to sleep, but I was so tired. Exhaustion clawed away at me. Just as I thought I’d fall asleep on the floor, I felt something press up against my side. 

“Calce?” I blinked slightly, realizing in a tired haze that she had found her way back to my side. She curled up against me. 

“I don’t want you to get too cold, that’s all.” I flushed faintly, then wrapped an arm around her. 

“A blanket would help.”

“I’m too tired to bother. Aren’t I warm enough?” I went quiet. She moved closer, until her head was on my chest. “I’m just a faithful familiar, Andrew. Nothing to worry about.” 

“… Yeah,” I muttered. “You’re fine.”


	11. What a Lovely Family

The birds were what woke me. They went off achingly early, before the sun had risen fully. The sound of chirping grew louder and louder in my mind, until it seemed to push its way into my dreams. Then I was awake, and realizing I really should have closed that window before collapsing on the floor. The bug bites itching on my wrist and neck taunted me. As I reached up to scratch my jaw, my arm was too heavy to move. In fact, a good portion of me seemed to be pinned to the floor. I slowly opened my eyes, wincing at the sunlight, then at the pain that seemed to echo through every limb. I was a mess of aching bones, and a pounding headache. Medicine must have been the next best course of action. But then I looked to see the source of my problem, and those thoughts left me.

The demon was pressed up against me, her coat still missing. I could feel it behind me. The metal cuff-links pressed into my shoulders. Her skin was warm against mine, warmer than natural. I stroked faintly over her shoulder without a thought in my mind, but twitched quickly away when she began to stir. Flushing, I tried to pull myself slowly off of her, but she was already awake before I could move.

“Summoner?”

“Morning…” My head was pounding harder. It didn’t help how close she was. Or her scent… “I was going to get something for a headache.”

She rubbed her temples, and I lay back against the floor so I wouldn’t need to look her in the eye. “Meds wouldn’t be a bad idea. Are you… Feeling better?”

I stared blankly ahead. I hadn’t even dreamt of it. A mindless sleep, as though nothing had happened. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re talking to me. That’s a good start.”

“I guess. I don’t know how to feel,” I admitted. There was a numb jolt, whenever I tried to think back to last night. That night had been the bad dream, and this was the awakening. “It doesn’t feel real.”

“It was.” She pressed closer, studying my face. “People did die.”

“Do you have to keep saying that?”

“Well, you need to accept it. Pretending it didn’t happen isn’t a good idea either. I mean, what about the regressing? The mental breakdown you’re going to inevitably have if you pretend like everything is fine? You’ll go to class and get PTSD in the middle of answering a question.” She nodded emphatically.  
“I’ve seen it enough. I don’t want you ending up that way.” I rolled my eyes.

“I’m not going to have a mental breakdown.” I tried to remember last night, and was alarmed to find pieces missing. In the aftermath, some things seemed fuzzier than others. “I think.”

“I dunno man. A hundred dead. That weighs on you.”

“Thanks.” I sighed.

“No problem.” She prodded my cheek. “You can talk to me about it, if you want. I’m here to tell you that you’re not crazy for what you saw.”

“I was just about to ask you if there really was a portal to hell and a possessed car salesman coercing me into joining his world domination.”

“All true.”

“And you, saving me.” I looked at her seriously, and she ducked her head. “You still haven’t told me why you’re going out of your way to help me.”

“Because you brought me back from Hell, why else?” She smiled to herself. “It’s pretty shitty down there, even if you don’t mind the fire. I’d rather not stay there, when there’s a whole other world to live…. So, are you going to get some meds or not? Because I’d prefer if you just stay lying here on the floor so I can sleep a little longer. You’re a great pillow.” She went back to poking my cheek with a grin.

“Why am I the one that has to acquiesce to your request?” I pulled her hand away when she wouldn’t stop prodding me. “Besides, why do you need to sleep?”

“I don’t.” She shrugged. “But its fun.”

“How? It’s just sleep.”

“Dreams, I guess. I like them. And I like the idea of just lying motionless for hours. Besides, what would I do if I wasn’t sleeping? Just lie here on you for a solid eight hours?” She grinned. “Watch you sleep?”

“That sounds boring,” I surmised.

“Exactly. No one wants that. And if I can sleep, I’m sure as hell going to.” She smiled faintly and pushed the cracked glasses further up on my nose. I’d forgotten to take them off. “Looks like you’ll need an explanation for these.”

I shivered at the thought. If they could trace anything back, I would never be able to fully explain that night. “I’m sure I can think of something. I doubt my family thinks anything outside of me tripping and falling would be the reason.”

“Do you think your family is going to ask why you were out so late?”

“I’m not sure they ever knew I was gone.” There was a pang in my throat. “When I do something wrong, they don’t really interact until I’ve had time to calm down… I guess.” I knew the drill. If I had a falling out, I wasn’t to be talked to until I had firmly apologized. Until then, I was a stranger in my own home. No one would outright tell me I had done anything wrong at first. That wouldn’t be until my father realized I wasn’t about to apologize to him. I was prepared for the explosion that would happen after that. It didn’t come often, but then, I never got to that point if I could help it. I was always faltering to his tantrums. We could never speak like normal people. “It doesn’t matter, really. They won’t really care.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Sounds like they don’t care at all. About anything.”

“It’s probably better if they don’t. We don’t want them looking too closely, right?” I smiled hesitantly.

“Well, it’s good if you want an alibi. If they think you were here the whole night, then you’re fine.” She pressed closer, and I held in my breath as her face ended inches from mine. “You’re still pale.”

“You’re not my mother,” I finally breathed, and nudged away from her.

She grinned to reveal those shark teeth. “No, but how am I supposed to feed off of you if there isn’t any blood to drink from?”

“Starve,” I suggested.

“You’re cruel,” she whined, and pressed her face against my chest. Jumping slightly, I stared down at her, waiting for her to make this into some kind of joke. Nothing. She kept her head there and the increasingly awkward seconds ticked by. I sat up quickly, stood and turned away. She popped her head up in surprise and watched as I headed for the bathroom. “What’s wrong?”

“Pain meds,” I muttered. “Pain meds and its too early in the morning for this.” Whatever adrenaline-fueled decisions I had made last night weren’t liable for the morning me. But that wasn’t to say I had forgotten. Or that I didn’t see the same things that I had before. I wasn’t sure what to think. Looking at myself in the mirror, I was trying to convince myself that is was ridiculous to be thinking this about a girl I’d only known a few days. But then, even that was ridiculous. She was a demon. This was all an elaborate farce.

I had only just returned from splashing as much cold water as I could on my face, when I heard my name called from downstairs. Calce and I locked eyes with my foot still halfway out the door. Her eyes widened, then she motioned her head towards the stairs. I shook my head, but she rolled her eyes and turned away.

Huffing, I reluctantly turned around, and walked downstairs to the gallows.

“Yes, mother?” I called back as I closed the door to my room behind me. As I took each step down the stairs, that familiar curtain began to weigh on me. It had gotten worse lately. Every time I thought about my father, it would return. Seeing him made it worse.

“Come down here, Andy. Something… Oh dear, something’s happened.” Her voice cracked. Whatever she wanted to talk about, it was more important than helping participate with whatever my father wanted. If she was willing to talk to me, it was serious.

I found her in the living room, her eyes glued to the television. It didn’t take long for me to realize what the news was.

“There’s been a terrible accident,” she said, pointing at the television with worry in her eyes. “At that university club house, you know, the one at the edge of town? It’s all gone…”

“Could have been some kind of stupid prank,” my father huffed. Hearing him speak was even more surprising. He had a plate of sausages in his hand from breakfast and popped them in his mouth one by one as he stared at the screen. He used a forkful of sausage to gesture at the screen. “Those kids think they’re adults just because they pay rent,” he said to me. I could only stare back in surprise. Perhaps he’d forgotten about dinner.

“Probably electrical.” Sam didn’t so much as look up from her phone at the armchair. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. “Nothing special.”

“So many lives, though,” my mother exclaimed. “There was a party, and then… The entire house, broken apart to cinders. No one got out…” She wiped a tear away from her eye, and I caught Sam rolling her eyes.

“There’s a place on the edge of town?” I asked. “I haven’t really explored yet.”

“Damn good thing you didn’t,” my father growled. “I would never let my family consort with people like that. They’re all from an art school, I heard. Out partying, drinking alcohol, and doing all sorts of illicit activities. I just can’t stand to see children throwing their lives away like that, and then having to face justice without ever making amends for their terrible decisions.” He sat back, and bit into his sausage. “I heard from a few of the parishioners. A few of their boys were there, from the high school. Tempted by all of that sin. I prayed for them, and I’ll be telling everyone else to do the same. It’s a painful thing, to lose your child to wickedness, especially when you’ve been raising them as well as you could. All of that sin you take into yourself, and then you burn out. Like a candle. Snuffed.”

Burning out like a candle. I could die any day. I should have died last night.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Good thing.”

“Dear, come sit with us.” My mother smiled, but her eyes were still focused on the television. “School was cancelled, so you don’t have to go rushing off. Why don’t you stay here? We can watch something more palatable. You were in your room so long, without dinner or breakfast, I was worried maybe you might get faint. You’re so thin.”

“I’m fully aware what the sun looks like, mother,” I sighed, but there was no bite behind it. “I just had a big project to work on. I’ve been so focused, I lost track of time. I should go back to it.” The lie came so easily, that it might as well have been the truth. My mother didn’t look away from her television, and my father didn’t even twitch away from the sausages.

“Missed breakfast.” Sam looked up, and I choked on my tongue as her eyes widened. She and I stared at each other, and her eyes settled on the crack in my glasses. I shook my head at her, achingly slow. She watched me for another moment, then flicked her eyes back down to her phone as if nothing had happened. “Mom made eggs and sausages. Great cholesterol.”

The one person I knew I could count on not to care about anything I was up to.

“I’m sorry about not joining you.” I sighed.

“I don’t see why you can’t,” my mother whined. “I’ll get you some pancakes, or more sausages. We should spend a day, praying I think.” I smiled faintly.

“Thanks mom, but I’m not that hungry. I might take you up on that another time, but I’ve got that project.” I didn’t want to leave Calce alone, and I didn’t want to deal with more awkward interactions than I had to.

“Project?” My father grunted, and sat down his plate by an unpacked box. “You’re spending even more time on school, are you?”

“Ah… Yeah.” I shrugged. “I want to do well in school.” He went quiet and stabbed at another sausage from the precarious position, leaving the awkward silence to hang in the air.

My heart started to beat quicker, watching him eating. He didn’t even glance in my direction, but there was more than enough of that tension in the air. I wanted to say something. He was looking for a fight. He was looking for an excuse for an explosion, and I felt like I was about to let it happen. He was the last person I should have been afraid of. Those hundred people he was watching dead on the screen, I’d been in that. I’d watched it all burn. His puffy face should have been nothing for me. Even if my heart was beating too fast, it was nothing in comparison to the stop when I’d realized what I’d done to Dean and the only other friends I’d made.

“I thought it would look nice,” I continued, biting my lip. “For school. Universities, and things. I didn’t want to waste money by applying with bad grades.”

“You’re doing fine in school, son,” he said with a cold tinge to his voice. “I don’t think you need to focus so heavily. It’s getting in the way of extracurriculars. What about that football idea? Did you change your mind?”

“No, dad. I’m not doing it.”

“Are you really sure about that?” He asked. “If not, there’s always volunteering for my Sunday School. We’re just getting started and we could use every hand. They’d be happy to have you there too.”

“I don’t think – No. I don’t want to do that. I want to focus on school.” He glared at his food.

“Don’t want to, is it? Why can’t you find something useful to do, Andrew?”

My tongue felt heavy as I tried to respond. “I am useful. And what I do is more than useful. I don’t think the things you suggest would help me. No, I know it wouldn’t. And it doesn’t matter. I…”

“Excuse me?” He dropped his fork onto the plate, and turned slowly to glare at me. I took a breath. My heart was beating out of my chest.

“I’m not going to be a football player. And I’m not going to participate in something I don’t believe in.” I stayed standing. I couldn’t run now. I couldn’t just leave.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t brush off the word of God with such voracity, young man.” He turned to me, the veins were bulging in his neck. “I already allowed you a lot more breathing room than I did with your sister, but I’d say this is getting out of hand.”

“It’s not about whether or not I believe in it,” I argued. There was no point pretending there wasn’t something else out there now, but that wasn’t the problem. If I told him I believed in it more than he did, what would it matter? I wasn’t going to heaven. But every word he said, every attempt to make this godly, it was all a façade to get me in his shoes, down his path. “But I don’t want to participate in your church. You… That’s your life. That’s your world. And I don’t want to be around that. When you get so focused on God, and only care about that, I feel like you forget that I have a life too, and it’s not the same as yours.” I looked at him desperately, but he stood without so much a glimmer as he walked towards me. Gulping, I took a step back subconsciously.

“I’m not godly, but it’s more than that,” I tried to continue. “I don’t want to learn religion from you. It’s all you ever talk about.” I kept waiting for him to interrupt me. I kept waiting for the explosion. He moved closer, and I resisted trying to run as he closed the gap until he was towering over me, a smear of grease still on his lip. I wasn’t sure how I could be so scared of someone after all I’d already gone through. How could he be more terrifying than a demon?

“I can’t believe I’m hearing something like this out of my own son,” he said quietly. Somehow, the quiet voice was worse than any yell. He had a way of staring down at me, making me feel so small. “This was never about football, was it? It was always about God. And all I do for this family, that you reject at every turn.”

“Dear,” my mother began, but I saw Sam grab my mom’s hand out of the corner of my eye. She went silent.

“I’m not what you want.” I glared up at him. “I’m not here to please you, and do what you want me to do. Do you want me to apologize for it? You always want me to apologize for doing something wrong. But I can’t apologize for just being me. For not being you.”

“You can repent. You can try to realize the sin you’re letting take over you. All of this disrespect for your own father, I can’t understand it. I can’t believe that my own son would treat me this way, after all I’ve done for him. You’re supposed to honor your father and mother.”

“Don’t pretend this is about religion. It’s not.” I refused to let him glare me down. I’d do it first. “It’s not about me sinning or not. It’s not about God –“

“Of course this is about God!” My father roared in my face. I twitched away in fear, my heart beating out of my chest. “This is all it’s always been about! You can’t seem to understand the respect you need to give to me and this family!”

“What respect!” I yelled back at him. He didn’t like that. I was so focused on him, I didn’t notice Sam leave or my mother struggling to interject. “What respect do you want me to give? What about the golden rule, isn’t that in your bible too? Why should I listen to you when you never listen to me!”

“You act like this mature little man, don’t you?” He snarled. “Always talking about your projects, and your smarts, and all you ever do it more and more school work, burying yourself in it until me and your mother forget we have a son! Well I never needed all that schoolwork. I never needed to learn as much as you seem to think you do, I got much further on God’s teachings and his Promise than anything else!”

“I don’t want to be you!”

“I don’t want you to be something I can’t even talk about at the parish! You’re an embarrassment, don’t you get that?” I stared wordlessly at him. “I can’t talk about you with all of the other parishioners because they all know that you haven’t come for a single service since we got here. I’m afraid they’ll find out that you haven’t been to church months before that! You’re… You’re a disgrace.”

It was a struggle to find words. “I’m… I’m not.”

“I give you plenty of room. I give you so much leeway. And you still find a way to be even worse than before. You end up an even bigger disgrace than I thought you’d be.” He took a step forward, and pushed a finger into my chest. Dimly, I could her my mother telling us to stop, but the static in my ears was louder. A rock had settled in my stomach. “I’ve given you more than enough, Andrew. I’ve done everything I can to lead you down the right path. But at every turn, you’re disrespecting God, you’re disrespecting me, and your disrespecting your mother.” I could only stare at his hand as he pushed me again. I tottered back a few feet, but he kept advancing. “You are a useless, Godless son, and I can’t seem to see any part of myself inside you.”

“I’m not a disgrace.” I sounded so far away. “Just because I don’t believe, or want to participate, how can I be… How is that wrong? Why do you have to do this?” I found myself feeling smaller and smaller, the further he pushed me away.

“I’m doing nothing, I haven’t changed.”

“But you have! I remember who you were, when I was young! You were bad, but now…” I stared at him, searching for an answer. But I found it myself. It was me. I was the one who had changed. I had bothered to run away from what he wanted. I wasn’t him. And he couldn’t… Couldn’t reconcile with that.

“And you think that picking a fight with me is a good start, huh boy? You remember how you used to listen to me, and listen to the Word of God?” He rose up to his full height, glaring down at me with clenched fists. “But then you seemed to make your mind up about God before you ever read the bible. I’ve given you everything, and you respond with this… This sinful nature. That’s how it is with you, isn’t it?”

“It’s not God,” I tried to say, but it kept getting overwhelmed by his loud booming voice as he shoved me back into the wall.

“You need the fear of God in you, don’t you? That’s what a kid like you needs, with all this disrespect. I thought about making you leave, and learn for yourself how thankful you should be for what the Lord has given us, but your mother always guided my hand to a softer path.” He gripped me by the collar of my shirt. His eyes were wild. “Soft. That’s what you are. You’re useless. I loved you, did EVERYTHING I could for you, I even gave you room to find the Lord yourself, and you still can’t seem to do anything right. I’m already wracking my brain thinking of ways to show you how misguided you are, but you take the cake with this disrespect. I don’t know how to teach a boy like you how to respect the Word of God when you seem to hate it so much. What has God ever done to you, eh? Loved you too much? Like me? I love you son, right now you’re pissing that back in my face.”

He kept talking, but I couldn’t hear anything. My hands were balled so tightly into fists, they were white knuckled. He must have been saying something passionately, quoting something. His teeth pulled back into a snarl, with all the wild passion of a sermon.

My fist collided with his jaw, and he froze.

I ran to the other side of the room by the stairs, my entire body numb as I turned to face him like a cornered animal. He turned to me slowly, the same look of shock on his face as he tried to realize what I’d just done. My fist stung, but it was almost nothing to him. It probably wouldn’t bruise. But that look of rage showed it didn’t matter how hard I’d hit him. I’d hit him.

“How dare you,” he muttered. “HOW DARE YOU!”

“Dear!” My mother gripped his shoulder before he could go running after me, but I was already off and up the stairs, the blood rushing in my ears. I was hot, too hot and everything felt too close.

I ended up at my room, shaking as I slammed the door behind me. My head knocked back against the door. I could barely hold in a whimper.

Calce was pacing back and forth, her fists clenched. She stopped as soon as she saw me. "What happened? Did they notice your glasses? I heard yelling.”

“We need to leave.”


	12. Commiserating With Your Pet Demon

“Leave? Your parents are downstairs.”

“Get in the fucking bag,” I snapped. I couldn’t stop panting. No matter how hard I breathed, I couldn’t seem to stop the urge to throw up. Not here. I couldn't. “We need to go.” I couldn’t stay here. Not with the room closing in on me. Not with the sound of my mother and father screaming downstairs. Not with all of this. I couldn’t believe what I’d said. I should have learned. I should have figured it out with the party, how sticking up for myself would go. I was so stupid, but I couldn’t control myself. I felt so safe, for that tiny moment. It was like I could do or say anything. But Calce couldn’t protect me from that. And I was weak. I’ve always been weak. “Please.”

She’d transformed before I’d finished speaking. The bat stared at me from the forlorn backpack left on the ground, already nudging herself inside. I scooped her up with a heaving gasp, and was running down the stairs before my mind had caught up with my legs.

I didn’t listen to the screaming. I didn’t listen to the yells for me to come back. I didn’t listen to anything but the screaming in my own head. The slam of the door as I booked it down the street with the backpack only half on my shoulder. The voice inside telling me to run, far, far away. To leave, before anything got worse.

I collapsed by the edge of the forest. Heaving, I fell onto my knees, and let my bag slip off my shoulders. Calce appeared from the open bag with outstretched wings as she climbed out. She uttered muffled noises as she climbed until she’d made it to the ground. When she’d managed that, she started crawling towards me.

“I fucked up,” I whispered to the forest. “I… I shouldn’t have fought him.”

“You tell me you’re logical, and then you turn around and do this.” Her voice made me jump. She was human again, rubbing my shoulder. “Want me to kill him?”

“No. He’s my father. And it was my fault.” I stared down at my hands. I was the one that took it too far. “I… I shouldn’t have done that. It’s my fault.”

“Really?” She dropped her hand as she looked over at the forest, then crawled towards it. She stopped, flopping down in front of me and stretched languidly over the fallen leaves that marked the edge of the undergrowth. “All I heard was him yelling at you. What did you do?”

“Punch him.” I watched for a reaction, but there was none.

“So?” I stared at her in disbelief.

“I laid a hand on my father – he… All he was doing… I was trying to fight him. I could have kept my mouth shut.”

“If I was there, I would have done a lot more than punch him.” She turned to the forest with a sigh. “You’re not strong. It probably didn’t even hurt him.”

“It’s the principle of thing,” I insisted. I could still see it, so visceral in my memory. “I raised a hand to my own father.”

“Your little baby hand, yes.” She smirked back at me.

“Shut up.” I glared at her. “You’re not helping.”

She turned around to gaze out at the forest. “What I see, is that you finally decided to step up in the way you keep saying you want to. You told your dad off, and now you’re here. It ain’t easy, fighting your superiors. Especially when they’re stronger than you. But it feels good. And then they know you aren’t just going to take it anymore. I don’t think you did anything wrong, except for not letting me help you.”

I ignored the last part. “You got superiors?”

She paused. “Not anymore.”

“Calce.”

“My maker. Something truly not of this world.” She shrugged. “She’s hard to describe.” Her eyes were strange when she looked back at me. “What are you going to do now?”

“I can’t go back there.” Only now was my heart rate starting to settle. “I laid a hand on him. There’s no telling what he might do to me. And I can’t let you hurt him.”

She wrinkled her nose, then sighed. “I get it. You could run away, maybe.”

“Run… No. I couldn’t.”

“Well, you just did. And I’d protect you, if you wanted to go.” She sat up.

“I can’t. I have a life ahead of me, and I don’t want to do something like throw it all away. And I’d never see my mom again, or Sam. Sam’s not bad, she didn’t call me out for anything. Even if she doesn’t care, she…” She noticed my glasses. My father stared right at me, and didn’t even care where I’d been, but she had noticed, and she kept her mouth shut. “I don’t want to leave them. It sounds so cowardly, just running from my problems.”

“Like you are now.”

“It’s different. This time, it was just to keep myself from dealing with my father. But I’m not running away forever. I just needed to get out of the house. To think.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to grasp anything other than that snapshot of punching my own father.

“What was it about, anyways?” She reached out to rip out a handful of grass. “All that yelling.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m stuck to you, I got all the time in the world to listen.” I curled up on the edge of the grass and watched her place the grass in front of her. She moved slowly, methodically. I tried to think of how to explain it.

“He… wants me to be like him. Do everything he wants. Before I met you, I didn’t believe in anything.”

“How romantic.”

“No-” I flushed. “I mean, I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe in Hell, or anything outside of the material world. None of that existed, it just seemed to be all a big story told to get people to do what other people wanted. My dad was the biggest perpetrator of them all, and he made me sick of it. I left his church and everything to do with religion. He keeps saying that’s why he hates me so much. I guess not hate. Disappointment, because I won’t be what he wants.” I frowned. “But that’s not the truth. It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s football, God, or anything else. I won’t listen to him and do what he wants me to do, because he only wants what I want. And then, he turns around and tells me I’m…” I bit my lip. “He can’t even talk about me around his parishioners because I left. I’m a disgrace.” It hurt, hearing those words from him. I always knew that’s what he felt. But he’d never told me that explicitly before.

“Such a bleeding heart,” she groaned.

“I’m ruining him.”

“Of course you are. No, Andrew. Your dad’s just another stupid human. Hell, you were so smart and now look at you. You want me to think for you and come to all the normal conclusions? I’m dumb as a sack of bricks.” She made a face. “You’re the decision maker here, and you know what kinda decisions I’m going to end up making. You sure I can’t just kill him?”

The thought made my stomach twist. “No. He’s terrible, but he’s just human. He isn’t threatening my life, or anything.” I bit my lip. I could still feel his hand at my throat. I had his life in his hands. I didn’t want that control.

“You sure? Because you punched him, and you already know you’re pretty weak. He must have made you feel cornered.”

That look of rage on his face. Being backed against the wall, that heartbeat that couldn’t calm down.

“… I don’t want you to kill him. He’s my father.”

“Blood is meaningless,” she mused.

“That’s not true!” I exclaimed. “You can’t change family-” I clamped my mouth shut as she clambered up to me, then pushed me down again the grass. I stared at those strange eyes, focused so heavily on me. Her tux flowed on either side of her like a cape.

“Blood doesn’t matter,” she growled. “The only thing that matters is freedom, and doing what you want.”

“Maybe if you’re a demon.” A faint shiver went down my spine as I nudged her off. “You trying to pin me isn’t going to change my mind. They’re the only connection I’ve got left… The others are gone. And you told me not to focus on that… So I’m not.” I sighed. “I can’t do anything to bring them back, so I have to deal with what happened. But I have a choice over what happens to my family. And I’m not going to let you hurt them. … I don’t know what you did to become a demon, but it doesn’t sound morally sound.”

“I killed my parents.”

I paused, then thought better than trying to go down that road. “Great. Then you’re obviously a great source of advice for dealing with parent child relationships.”

“I didn’t care. But you can’t just let him push you around. You can’t just do nothing.”

“Well, I already tried that. You’ll notice that he’s taller, and considerably larger.”

“I already told you that this discrepancy can be fixed pretty easily if you let me.”

“Kill him? Is that all that you think will solve this problem? The rest of my family relies on him, and the police would absolutely come after that… And he’s my father. It’s wrong. No. That’s stupid.” I rubbed my temples. “I just… I want some time to figure things out on my own. You know it’s only been days, right? Since this all went down? I’m being pulled in a hundred different directions and I haven’t even had the time to drum up some kind of game plan to keep my sanity.”

“My job is to help you,” she sighed, looking resigned. “I could help here. Maybe not kill him. Rough him up a bit.”

“And have him learn that you exist? What do you think would come of that? We’ve established you’re doing a lot more than your job for me, but that wouldn’t help. He’d go even more insane. It’s a line I don’t want to cross.” I sighed. “I don’t understand how you can be so helpful, and such a hindrance at the same time.”

I was waiting for a response. Something funny, that would get my mind off of things. Something that would make me smile and forget why I was here. But she was silent. My watery smile faltered, watching her downcast and faraway eyes, then tentatively reached out to touch her arm. “Calce?”

“What makes you think I’m upset?” She looked up with a lopsided grin. It was so forced.

“I didn’t ask. You don’t have to pretend to keep appearances. I’m sorry if I hit a nerve.” She shrugged, and pulled away, then stood up with her eyes on the forest.

“You didn’t. I get that you don’t like having me around. You can’t solve shit with the brute strength I’ve got. Not stuff like this, anyways. You’re the one I should be listening to. I just… I want to protect you.”

I softened. “I know. But you’ve got to let me be the one to call the shots here. That’s why I’m the Summoner.”

“Yeah, yeah. But don’t you think for a second you’re going to push me away with your shitty attitude.” She turned to me, pointing down directly at my broken glasses. “You’re being an asshole, but I ain’t gonna run away. I’m stuck to you, and you’re stuck to me. So you get to deal with my annoying self, and I get to deal with your insults and orders. And neither of us are happy.”

I grinned faintly. “I don’t know, your annoyance can be a welcome benefit sometimes.”

“Yeah?” She grinned back. “Well, you’re an asshole and the only reason I’m still here is because I can’t physically leave your fuckin’ depressing-ass presence. So fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

“Fuck you more.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “Come on, let’s do more stupid shit. You look like you need it.”

“Something stupid sounds good, right about now.” Anything to get my mind off of things. “As long as it’s not another party.”

“Nah, none of that. It’s time to get rid of your fear of forests, Summoner.” She smirked as I paled.

“But… Why?”

“You live around one, it’s kind of a dumb fear. So, we’ll have an adventure, and you won’t be afraid anymore.” She ran over to grab my hand, but I twitched out of the way.

“Wait- you can’t expect me to go in there,” I said emphatically, waving at the edge of the woods. Even being this close made my stomach churn. “There’s no telling what could be lurking in there.”

“Well I don’t know about abusive fathers, but one thing I can set on fire is a bear.” She pulled me to my feet and grabbed the backpack, then shoved it into my arms as she pushed my glasses back up my nose with a teasing smile. “Ever seen a bear screaming while on fire?”

“I don’t think anyone’s seen a bear screaming while on fire.”

“Then you’re missing out,” she grinned, and pulled me closer. She ran into the forest, with me at her heels.

Going through the threshold, I could feel my heart drop and my breath leave me. I peered into that darkness as the grove’s light was quenched from the canopy overheard. It was like looking into a pool of water you knew had to be several hundred feet down. Overwhelming. And the further she pulled me, the further we went from civilization, the more I could feel my heartbeat rise. Then we were amongst only the branches. I turned around, but there was nothing in sight to ground myself. The sound of birds chirping was all I had.

“Can we go back now?” I whimpered. “Isn’t this far enough?”

“What’s wrong?” She asked, turning to me.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up…” I shivered faintly with every small breeze.

“It’s just trees.” She poked one with a finger. “They won’t kill you.”

“You don’t understand. There’s nothing around, I’ll get lost,” I stuttered and shut my eyes. “I’ll never get out. A-and then I’ll die out here.” I slowly opened them again and whipped my head around wildly. I’d already forgotten where we’d come from.

“You’re so tightly wound.” She rolled her eyes. “Breathe. Deep breaths. I’m here, I know where we are, you don’t have to worry about getting lost, because I can’t leave your side.” She grabbed my hand again and pulled me further ahead of her. “Open your eyes summoner, and just feel it. That forest smell. I used to live in worlds like this. I’d hunt in the forest, feel the earth under my feet. The human world is amazing, if you know where to look. Plus, you only got so much time to enjoy it. It’s a waste to be afraid.”

“I’m too afraid to care about any philosophical discourse you’re shoving down my throat. Weren’t you supposed to listen to me?” I whimpered, but followed her all the same. She jumped up onto a fallen log, and balanced her feet carefully as she began walking down the length of the old pine.

“I am listening. Focus on something else,” she suggested.

I pulled her back from the log, and she a made a muffled noise of surprise. “Then listen to me now, and follow my orders. If I’m going to be stuck gallivanting about this forest, I want answers to everything you keep so vague.”

She groaned. “I didn’t realize this was going to be a test… If it’ll get you to stop being afraid, sure. Ask away.”

I blinked in surprise. “I didn’t expect you to actually say yes.”

“I’m sick of dealing with you constantly nagging me about it. And you ordered it.” She looked sheepishly up at me. “I’m supposed to be following your orders.”

“Well… why do you hate me asking questions so much? Every time I want to know, you play it off but never really answer more than something vague.” She bit her lip, then climbed back onto the log, and started slowly walking down it again. I followed her with a raised eyebrow.

“You only believe I exist because I came out of a hole in the floor from a completely different dimension in front of your eyes,” she said. “I’ve shown you a bunch of times that I’m not a human. And yet, you still find it hard to believe, don’t you?”

I didn’t want to give her an answer knowing it would play right into what she wanted.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She jumped off the log and onto another one on the other side of me.

“You can’t tell me that you believed it when you were human,” I argued. “You said you were one once. I bet it was just as big of a shock.”

“Well, I guess. I never really… Cared about it. Whether it was real or not.” She kept her eyes cast down at her feet as she walked along the wet edge of the wood, her arms out on either side of her. “I told you about how I was made. I made a deal, and not exactly a good one. Eternal life and strength, in exchange for life of another. I wasn’t a good person. I never… Felt anything, really. I guess that was the first problem.”

“Not feeling anything - What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But I never understood how it was that my parents seemed to care so much.” I resisted the urge to play the armchair psychiatrist. “Or my friends… Father wanted to make a deal to get me married off, and I didn’t want that. So, a devil found me. My master.”

I furrowed my brows. “The thing that made you.” That was another question that burned inside. The hierarchy, and what I could expect from that world if I ended up there. Perhaps, if I spoke with this devil, I could cut out my own deal.

She nodded, and what she said next set that idea on fire. “She told me she’d give me freedom and power if I would show my devotion to her, so I did. I killed my parents, my childhood friend, everyone who mattered in my life. It didn’t feel like anything to me.” She paused, and I stared wordlessly at her. I couldn’t even imagine it. “I was taken to hell. When I returned, I wasn’t the same anymore.” She smiled faintly. “It’s weird, you know. You feel nothing, but then you lose your soul and suddenly it’s like you can really feel something. Sometimes I think that life before was a dream…” She paused again.

“But it wasn’t,” I remarked. She nodded, and fell silent. I bit my lip as I tried to think of what to say next. “I bet there’s something out there recording you. Have you ever thought about that, looking at a paper trail and trying to make sense of it all?”

“No. I don’t see a point.” She fell back down to me after struggling by a log. “I mean, it would just tell me what I already experienced. That I fell into my master’s ranks, and moved through the world with her. Recordings of all the chaos I created is boring when I compare it to how I felt about the real thing.” She grinned at me as she joined my meandering pace. “There were others, too, you know. Like me.”

“With you?”

“My master had a small group she created. I never knew why. But there was me, a wolf, and a tiger. I was the bat. We were free to do anything, kill anything. And I loved it.” She smiled, her eyes far away again. “It was nice, having the capacity to feel something. The reason I became the way that I did was because someone I cared for put a good word in for me, to make me like her.”

“A demon?” I studied her curiously.

“She and I were the closest of anything. I think she was the first person I ever liked.” I swallowed and turned to focus on a particular set of leaves on the ground. “When that group broke up and our master abandoned us, she and I left. We struck it out together. It worked, for a while. But it was never the glory days. The world was always changing. You couldn’t just barge into a castle anymore and kill the king before feasting on the court. The social order of humans was complicated, and they had weapons they could actually hurt us with. You can’t fight a grenade.”

“How depressing,” I said, sarcasm dripping. She rolled her eyes.

“I get it. You don’t understand things the way I do. That’s fine.”

“As long as you don’t try to kill anyone without my say so, I’m alright with your evil villain backstory.”

“Whatever.” She stuck out her tongue and continued to walk for a while with me until she gathered her thoughts again and continued. “She decided she wanted to try America, and I wanted to stay in Europe. There was a fight, but it wasn’t much of one. I think in the end, I loved her more than she loved me. But we’ve always been free spirits, and she wanted to see the world. I ended up on my own, watching the first world war unfold in front of me. That was fun,” she chuckled. “Then the second came around, and I got my fill of blood and gore. I could see how cruel humans could be.” I watched her as she puzzled something out in her head. “Somehow, I felt like I was more human than they were sometimes, you know? At least I ate my kills. It was like that up until the end.”

“What happened?”

She gritted her teeth. “I was hanging out in the wrong place at the wrong time. I fed off a soldier, and ended up getting cornered by a bunch of them, and a priest. The soldiers weren’t a problem in close range like that, but the priest kept talking, and saying shit in Latin, holding up a bloody bible and sprinkling me with water that burned. The more he spoke, the weaker I got. Eventually, I couldn’t even stand up, and something opened up underneath to drag me back to Hell.” She winced. “Wasn’t pretty, gotta say. And this time there was no master involved to help me through it. This wasn’t making me into anything. This was limbo, and I couldn’t go anywhere. I wasn’t even trapped necessarily, but I couldn’t leave. There just wasn’t a way. Unless someone bothered to try to mess with that world, I was stuck waiting for something like that to happen. It was… Lonely, I guess.”

“I’m… sorry.” I wasn’t sure of what else I could say. An entire life, a world of ups and downs, lived in a world I had never heard of. Lived by a demon. Even if I hadn’t believed in it, I’d never thought they were capable of… Feeling that way.

She perked up, and grinned.

“Hey, you’re the one that got me out of there. You’re the last person that should be apologizing to me.”

I turned away with a heated face, pushing up my glasses. “What about that tiger, or wolf then? That girl, have you had any thoughts about trying to get in contact with her again?”

“Well that’s… That’s something I didn’t really think about. I guess, no. I have you. Based on what I remember of her, I’m pretty sure she’d try to kill you to release me of any contract. Or for the hell of it,” she laughed. “She’s much, much stronger than me. The oldest of all of us. She scares even me. She’s great.” I’d have to remember not to ask about that girl any time soon. “Probably went the same way I did, though. I mean,” she turned to me. “Have you heard anything about mass murders lately?”

“No, nothing. At least, nothing demony.”

“That’s what I thought.” She nodded to herself. “No, that life was nice, but that isn’t me now. She’d probably want to be by herself, anyways. She changed over time, and started to feel like it would be better if she could find herself. Her independence.” She went quiet again, and in the silence the only thing we could hear were the muffled footsteps of our feet against the undergrowth. We were following some kind of path made by an animal that wound itself through the trees. Light dappled from the canopy above to prove light below. It was a bright, sunny morning. I wasn’t sure how she managed to make me feel at ease so quickly. But everything that had terrified me seemed to disappear while I walked with her. The forest seemed peaceful. I had all but forgotten the underlying terror of being utterly lost.

“Do you miss her?”

“… Nah. Not like that.” She chuckled. “I’ve had a hundred years to move on. Why?” She smirked, circling me. I stopped in front of her. “Jealous?”

“No,” I turned quickly away, twisting again to the side. “Just… Curious, is all.”

“Always running away.” She turned to walk ahead with a chuckle, weaving between the trees like an animal skulking away. “Well, Summoner, I can promise you that I’m here to devote my time to you.” I rolled my eyes, then paused as I processed her words. Wait.

“Calce?” I called. She was moving further, laughing as she raced ahead. I laughed, trying to catch up to her. “Calce, you’re getting a little far away,” I tripped ton a root, nearly losing my footing as I struggled to not lose her. “Wait-”

The stick erupted from my shoulder.


	13. Listen, I've Been Having a Bad Day

I fell with a muffled thud. I didn’t even think to speak. The shock of something digging through my body was too sharp for pain. One minute I was up, and the next I was flat on the ground.

“Think you’re real smart, don’t ya Andy?” His voice was right at my ear. My blood ran cold. Jack’s light teasing laugh echoed through the forest.

“Summoner?” I heard Calce ahead of me. Too faint. Waiting for me. I opened my mouth to yell, but no words came out. I felt something sharp against the back of my head, a pain that exploded into stars and it was only then I screamed.

In a flash, I saw her running towards me.

“Boom goes the dynamite!” I heard him yell. The log that launched itself onto my legs kept me from moving. I dug at the undergrowth desperately trying to pull myself up, but another rock intercepted my arm. Blood and gore gouged from where the sharp edged stone had hit, and I pulled both of my hands back as quickly as I could with wide eyes in order to keep it from happening again. Another jarring scream ripped through me as I looked closely at it. Seeing my own flesh and blood torn like that was surreal. It was too cold, too sharp and too numb for it to hurt.

“You know, for a smart guy, you’re pretty dumb,” He trilled. “All of this playing in the forest. Just gives a guy like me a great opportunity. So many things to play with. Makes me wanna make you into a wooden porcupine.” He was far off in the trees and whispering at my ear at the same time. My head was aching; it was impossible to tell. “Just a little something to warn you, you know? Thought I’d give you a little reminder…” He paused, seeming to notice Calce barrelling towards me. “Damn. I’ll need something for that one. Good warm up, though.” It felt like a kick at my side. Nothing in comparison to what else he’d done to me. “And a fuck you for good measure.”

“Show yourself, fucker!” Calce snarled as she raced back, skidding to a halt and trying to lead in every direction. But there was nothing. Any voice that had been there was gone, or else was never there. The only remnants were echoing laughter that hurt my head. I couldn’t even tell where he had been in the first place, and I didn’t try to. Instead, I looked up blankly at her with my teeth gritted in pain.

“Calce…”

“Where? Where is here?” Her hands were shaking in fists, taking a step in one direction only to fly back to me. She couldn’t leave me, not with him out there. But it meant she couldn’t do anything to stop him. “I’ll fucking kill him!”

It was too late. She was desperately tried to pinpoint where the laughter was coming from. But it was leaving, barely more than a whisper. It melded itself with the breeze that ruffled the falling leaves. “Shit. Shit shit shit-” She crouched down to me. Her eyes darted from side to side. “I don’t know what to do. Should- Should I go after him?” 

“Hospital,” I muttered. “I… hurts…”

She bit her lip, then nodded. “Right, right…” She reached out to touch me, then pulled away with a hiss. As soon as she laid a hand on my shoulder, my entire body erupted in pain.

“Just do it,” I muttered.

“I can’t, you’re hurting. It’s bad… Fuck,” she swore under her breath. “Why are humans so fucking fragile?”

“I can… I can take it.” I couldn’t move, other than raise my head. But I stared at her pleadingly. She deliberated in her mind, looking from my arms, to my back, then swore again.

“Fuck it,” she growled, and pulled me from the log that kept me pinned in one smooth motion with enough strength to pull my shoulder out of its socket.

Explosions of white went off in my head again. I heard something like an apology, hissing, the rush of wind. Then all was silent, and dark. 

….

The world around me was white. Overly bright, staining the inside of my retinas. I didn’t want to open them, for fear they’d stain it further. But at the same time I couldn’t bear the underlying curiosity. Where was I? What was happening? Everything was so sluggish, it was difficult to pin down a thought. I couldn’t seem to grasp at my own mind. I could only be a passive soul, watching as it meandered back and forth. Complaining about the light, idly curious about the world around me. Still not curious enough to open my eyes, of course. But it enjoyed it this way. There was no pain, no fear, no anxiety prickling away at my senses. Nothing but the quiet enjoyment of nothingness.

I agreed with my meandering thoughts. It was peaceful to not have to think or remember anything. But I couldn’t live like this. Not forever. There were things to do, things that I couldn’t seem to pin down in my mind. Things that, if I truly reached out, perhaps I could grasp onto.

That’s what led me to open my eyes. This time, the ceiling wasn’t the same as my room. Instead of beige, it was a blinding white. The closed window to my left was what reflected that light. The sun shone high in the bright blue sky overhead. It was strange, how happy it looked. Surreal. I looked to the sun, staring at it past the forest of branches that separated it from me. It could have been the same day. It could have been hours ago. Or it could have been whole days, I had no way of knowing.

My tongue was dry. There was a faint beep from my right. An IV in my arm. It itched when I raised my arm to see the handiwork of some nurse. Some kind of solution slowly dripping into me, with a system to my right making a small beep every few seconds. Based on how far away everything seemed, painkillers.

I settled back in the bed with a faint smile. Calce had done her job well. I was safe. Safe, with no pain, somewhere someone could take care of me.

I reached to grab my glasses on the side of the bed where the iv drip was, then paused with them halfway on my face. Calce. My parents.

No one was here. I was in a room, completely alone, in a hospital bed. A tiny room. A bathroom across from me, a door half open to my right, yet no personnel.

“Hello?” I called out, surprised how coarse my voice sounded. I looked over my own form. A hospital gown under thin covers. I didn’t wince when I unearthed myself from the blanket to take a look at my legs, but perhaps I should have. The backs of them were covered in large dressed cuts, and indents that would be bruises soon enough. My arm was covered gauze from where that stone had taken a chunk out of me. I held up my hand. Two of them in my dizzy vision.

A concussion, then. That must have explained how dizzy I felt. The only cure for that was rest. I lay back in the bed, glancing over at my shoulder. Even in this haze, I could remember what had happened to that.

Nothing but dressing on that side of my body. It wasn’t stained, but it felt numb. There was nothing there to that side of me, except for the dullest knowledge that a shoulder existed. If Calce really had taken it out of its socket, then they must have pushed it back in. Something like that though, I think it would have woken me.

Self-diagnosing myself. I grimaced. It was stupid, trying to figure it out. I wasn’t an expert. But it was all I could to try to make sense of what had happened. I closed my eyes, but found I couldn’t sleep, not with the window that bright. I could only lie there in silence, and wait.

The tiny familiar squeak made me jump, then brighten immediately. I looked down at the other of the bed and noticed my backpack lying there, forlorn. Inside it, tiny eyes peered back at me, then the head poked itself out of the bag and her large ears swivelled back and forth. The strange fox-like face peered up at me, then opened its jaw to squeak again in a strange grin, her claws scrabbling against the zipper to gain traction.

“You did good, Calce.” I murmured with a smile. “Thank you.”

She squeaked again, and I turned back to that open door. There was faint chatter from outside. I picked up the harsh voice of my father, and the worried whine of my mother. The back of my neck prickled at the realization. Someone had recognized me and known who to call, or else Calce had left some kind of message. I should have known I would have to deal with them. I just didn’t realize it was going to be so soon.

“Calce, you’re going to have to stay like that a little longer.” I looked back to her, but she had already disappeared again. The only evidence to show she had ever been there was the open zipper, which she was already working meticulously to close from the inside with what little dexterity her tiny fingers offered her. I tried not to chuckle in case anyone heard but the accompanying frustrated squeaks were too funny to ignore.

“Andrew?” My mother called.

“I’m here mother,” I answered, sitting up as I adjusted my glasses. Her pale face appeared in the doorway, then lit up when she saw that I was awake and waiting patiently for her.

“You’re awake! Oh, dear I was so worried.” She was at my side in a moment. Her hands stopped from gripping my arm when she saw the IV. She looked unsure of where to touch and eventually settled with holding onto the rails of the bed itself. “I heard so much about what happened, I was so scared for you.” Her eyes were watering. I smiled reassuringly.

“It’s alright, mom. I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

“But your shoulder.” She looked at it, almost tempted to touch it for a second, then thought better of it. “What happened was awful dear, just terrible. I’m so sorry we couldn’t be here sooner. But we had to have a talk with the police, and then the doctors, and all of this paperwork…” I paled.

“Police?”

“For your assault, dear. Don’t you remember what happened?” She reached out, tentatively stroking my hair. She stopped when I winced as she prodded a bruise. “We haven’t heard much, but they wanted our accounts, but we didn’t have much to say.”

“Oh…” There was that anxiety, rearing its ugly head after that small light of peace.

“Well… Let’s focus on getting you all healed up, okay? It’s been such a terrible time for you, that fire, and now this… You shouldn’t have to worry about talking to anyone until you feel better.”

“I… I don’t remember much anyways,” I lied carefully. “Whoever attacked me did it from behind.”

“Shush, it’s alright sweetie…” Seemingly forgetting the bruises on my head, she tried to go back to stroking my hair but found once again that it was painful. “You shouldn’t have to worry about any of that, not until you’ve had time to process what’s happened.”

“That’s what I told ‘em.” My father responded from the doorway. I froze with my eyes on him. Waiting for something. He wouldn’t hurt me here. Not with me in a hospital. We were surrounded by orderlies and staff. Staff I couldn’t see, had never interacted with, and for all intents and purposes didn’t exist.

Calce was there, beside me. Stuck in a backpack because of her attempts at being secretive, of course, but still there nonetheless.

That put my mind a little more at ease.

“Hi, father,” I murmured. He didn’t seem to hear me. He paced the edge of the room, talking more to himself than to me.

“I told them that no son of mine would ever get into something like that and come out of it the way that you did if it was a fair fight. This had to be someone who used some kind of dirty tactic. You don’t give yourself enough credit for the strength you’ve got… Or maybe you would have been able to do better, if you trained for that sort of thing. Focused less on school, more on…” He didn’t need to finish his sentence. I had nowhere to go now, no way of defending myself. He had me where he wanted me, and now he was looking for something, anything to latch onto.

“What did the doctors say?” I asked him quickly. It seemed to shake him out of his thoughts. He didn’t look pleased that I hadn’t taken the bait. He seemed like he had something sour in his mouth when he turned back to me to look at me for the first time.

“It’s not that bad, except for the shoulder. That will take ages to heal, but you won’t need surgery. They were arguing about that, before but…” He shrugged. “I’m no doctor. I just hear that you’ll survive.”

“Thanks, dad.”

He sniffed. “I hope you know that you being gone for so long scared the both of us out of our minds. You shouldn’t have run away like that. Then this wouldn’t have happened.” He paced around the room, looking unsure of what other tactic to use next. “That sort of cowardice is going to get you killed,” he finally added. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t just sit like a mature human being and have a proper conversation. It’s more childish than I expected from you.”

I reached out and took my mom’s hand. His voice had turned into background noise in my head. The mental strain already weighing down on me. “How long was I asleep?”

She sighed, then smiled at me. “A few hours, dear,” my mother said, and gripped my hand tightly with something to finally hold onto. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”

My father stood awkwardly in the middle of the room behind her, with his arms crossed, and went back to pacing. His glare at me was more than enough to show I’d done wrong, not listening.

The words hung in the air. That he was the reason I’d left. That because we had that fight, I ended up in this position. But there was no way I was going to say anything. For now, I just wanted respite. It was nice here, with my mother holding my hand and saying the sweet lies that she always did to make things a little easier. She was good at pretending everything was right. Right now, I wanted to believe it as much as she did.

“You’re behaving just as cowardly as you did before,” he finally muttered, and stalked out of the room. “We’ll have a talk when you get home.” The slam of the door reverberated through the room. I took a breath, then turned to my mother.

“Did they say when I could be released?” I asked her.

“As soon as you were conscious, they said. You just need to take some medication home with you, and that should be fine. The shoulder should stay in a sling, of course, and you shouldn’t move it too much. But you were very lucky.” She smiled. “They wanted to emphasize that. It didn’t do as much damage as they thought. When you were brought in… Oh.” She paused. “That was something I meant to ask. They said you just appeared there, in the emergency room.”

“I don’t remember,” I said quickly. “I was unconscious, remember?”

“Oh, right, right…” She chuckled faintly. “I suppose it’ll be a mystery. Perhaps a good Samaritan. I’d like to hope so.”

“Definitely.” I nodded with a smile, then frowned. “About Dad…”

“I’d really not like to talk about your father, if that’s alright with you dear.” She traced circles into the back of my hand with the same bland smile. “He’s very upset with everything that’s going on, and this might have been the straw to break the camel’s back.”

“You mean he’s upset about me, right? There’s nothing much else for him to be upset about.”

“There’s issues with settling into a new town that he has to go through, in ways that we don’t. He’s a pastor and he had to move here and get to know an entire population in the space of a few weeks so that he can do his job properly. He has to build his reputation, Andy, and that’s difficult.”

“Because I’m not a Christian like him. He said so, in the fight. I’m a disappointment. An embarrassment.” She flinched.

“You know I don’t like to get between you and your father when you butt heads. Boys will be boys, and you two seem to be like oil and water sometimes. I don’t want to side with someone and hurt the others’ feelings. And…” She bit her lip. “Would it be such a difficult ask for you to come to the church, just once? It would be a bonding experience, for you and him. Maybe you’d find a way to patch up this rift between you two. And maybe… You could try the football, see if it’s something you’d like. You never know…”

“Mom,” I held her hand tighter than I meant to. “Please stop.” My throat felt dry. “I… I don’t know how you don’t see it. The way he is. Maybe…” She couldn’t. And sometimes I couldn’t either. Right now I could; I had Calce. But he was her husband. “Maybe you gave up a long time ago, but I won’t let him push me like that.”

“He’s your father, Andrew.” She held my hand close to her heart, staring at me with imploring eyes. “He just wants what’s best for you. If you constantly fight him all the time, then I can’t help you. You… Changed, when you got older. You used to be so sweet. Now, it’s like you’re looking for ways to tear the family apart. Sam and I get so scared when you fight. It’s like you want to hurt us. You want to make us feel unsafe in our own home. You make your father’s blood pressure go through the roof, and I… I was worried the neighbors would hear.”

I pulled my hand away. “I think I’d like to rest.”

“Andy…” She wiped a few tears from her eyes, then took a breath and straightened. “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father and I spoke with the police, and we brought them here for you to give a statement. We thought it would make things easier than having to go down to the station, with the state you’re in. They wanted to take to you as soon as they could.”

“What?” I balked. “You didn’t consult me? You just came up with this on your own – and why are you just telling me this now?”

“We’re your parents, Andy. And I promise, if it gets to be too much, they won’t press you. They’re nice people. They just want your statement…”

“Why would you bring them here?” I couldn’t run. I couldn’t do anything. My father was in the room all over again.

“I don’t understand what’s wrong with giving an account. I would have thought you’d want that terrible person to get caught.”

“You didn’t even ask me first!” I growled, glaring at my own mother. For so long, I thought she had been a victim, and that I had to try and protect her. Tears fell from her eyes. She was unused to seeing me angry at her. I didn’t like how it felt either. “I…” I shook my head, my lips pulled back in a snarl. “Whatever. I’ll talk to them.” She turned to leave.

“Wait,” I stopped her. It hurt to see her cry, but it hurt more that she was doing it because she was trying to push me somewhere that would only end terribly. She wanted me to feel bad for her. “It’s you… Too, isn’t it?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, Andy.” She wiped her eyes again with more tears threatening. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but-”

“I just want you to know mom, very clearly.” I had to be strong. I couldn’t let it go. “I am not going to let you push me around. It doesn’t matter if you use honey instead of vinegar. But I’m not going to be fucked with. You can’t push me into things, and expect me to agree to them because you smile.” Her face grew white, but I wouldn’t waver. “I won’t forgive you for what you told me. Just back down? Agree with Dad? Agree with whatever you or he push me into? Who do you think I am? What kind of child do you think you raised? Have you been blind these past years, to think you were going to get some perfect obedient son? I have the internet, mom. I’ve got friends. I know you think what you’re doing is right, or that it’ll go away if you just agree to it. But I can’t do what you do. I can’t play his game. The only thing you and he are doing, is pushing me away.”

She left the room silently. I stared ahead, at nothing. It wasn’t until the two of them were gone that guilt began to eat away. I knew my father was bad, I had convinced myself so long ago, in that rebellious teenager way. But now… I’d never felt so alone. I’d probably done something terrible, yelling at my own mother. I couldn’t even tell anymore. What was a good parent? What was the right answer? I had probably made a mistake, a terrible mistake. But it had felt so right in the moment. She sounded so sad and alone and fully prepared to throw me right back at a pit of vipers. She blamed me for it all, and I couldn’t tell anymore if it was because she was just that afraid, or if she truly felt it. I couldn’t see it properly anymore. Maybe I’d just lashed out because everyone seemed to keep trying to pull me in every direction. I never got a say. Damnit, I wanted a say. My stomach hurt so badly I was half tempted to try making it to the bathroom.

There was another knock at the door. I whipped my head up to watch the blue uniforms enter.


	14. No Officer I am Totally not a Murderer

I wanted to break down so badly.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the police officer drawled. Her hair was tied back in a neat bun, with her hands at her sides gripping the heavy belt. The young woman smiled sincerely, trying to make up for the scowl of her companion behind her. “I know it’s not exactly par for the course, but with the state you’re in, I didn’t want to have to get you to go down to the station to take a statement.”

Seeing police officers sent warning bells in my head. I wondered if they could smell the guilt. I wondered if they were on the same case of the mansion fire. “S… Statement…” I stammered.

“Yes, son.” The elderly male companion nodded. He could have been somebody’s grandfather, but he would have been a pretty dour one if he was. He kept his hands firmly at his sides, close to bulge that was so obviously a gun at his holster. I wasn’t sure why he’d want to shoot at in a hospital with a cripple witness. “If that would be alright with you. We didn’t want to let something like this go, not in this town.”

“I… Right…” Not let it go. But the echoing words of what Peter Michaels had told me once still haunted me. If he had connections to the police like he said, then they had no reason to look into an assault. Unless they knew that it wasn’t that gang. If they knew something strange was going on, that had nothing to do with what they should turn a blind eye to, maybe that scared them. The man kept twitching his eyes back and forth. They knew something was wrong, because none of the usual people had attacked me. Perhaps, they even thought it was connected to the mansion last night. My head was pounding.

“As soon as I heard from your father, I knew we had to take this case,” The older officer continued in the same gruff tone, and I stifled a whimper of relief. “The poor man was distraught when he heard what had happened to you. Called everyone around. The pastors’ son, targeted…” He shook his head. “I felt it was my duty to look this up personally, with Morrison here.” 

“Agreed,” the woman nodded with a smile. “Your father’s a good man, really passionate in the church. I thought it was the least we could do, what with him coming up such a ways just to touch our hearts. It’s not fair for you to have to see such a rough side of town. Ridgeden’s not usually this… active.”

I deflated, staring at my hands. I was going insane, looking into things that weren’t there, and my father had called the police. He’d looked out for me. I was looking for monsters, and couldn’t have been more confused. Was he trying to maintain a look? Did he care?

I wanted Calce. I just wanted to make sure she was real. So many things didn’t feel real these days.

The woman got out a notebook and pen, nodding at me with the same plastered reassuring smile as she stood a few feet from the bed. I barely tilted my head up to see how the man hung back. Maybe he realized how intimidating he seemed.

“I’m officer Morrison and this is my partner, officer Smith. We don’t want to scare you or anything like that. I heard you had quite the ordeal.”

“… Yes.” I tried not to stutter this time.

“Well, I’m sorry to have to bring it up again. But I’m going to have to ask you to try and remember what happened this morning. Is that alright with you?”

“Y-yes…” Damnit.

“Do you have a timeline of when this occurred?”

“I left my house, and went to the forest. I wanted to go for a walk, so I went inside.” My voice sounded so choppy and robotic. I wouldn’t have believed me.

“We’ve been telling people not to go into the forest since the attack last night, young man,” The older officer interrupted with a scowl. “Did your father not have a talk with you?” 

“No, I just saw the news before I left... I was… it was hectic in the house. I just wanted to get out.” She kept writing in that book. The scratchings ate away at my mind. My father had been worried enough to call the police. I wished he would just pick a side, and stay with it. I had enough problems eating away at me. I didn’t need more guilt, but it trickled in, eating slowly away. I had fought my worried parents for no good reason only to end up alone and unwanted.

“What happened around then, do you remember the time?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t have a watch. Maybe nine. I’m not sure.” I must have been pasty white. Nervous. Guilty. I had nothing to worry about. They were doing the routine. I was fine. I should be fine. I was just a victim of an assault, something bad had happened to me. I wasn’t a criminal.

I had killed hundreds of people.

“What happened then?” Officer Morrison asked with a smile. She had calm, brown eyes. I wondered what made her get into this profession. She didn’t look intimidating.

“I went into the forest for a while. And then someone attacked me from behind.”

“Why were you going in the forest?” She asked.

“I wanted to go for a walk. To clear my head.”

“Your mother told me you were afraid of the forest. You’d told her before that you hated it.”

“I… I…” I was choking on my own tongue. I coughed. Hundreds of people. “I was afraid, yes. But it was a nice day. I wanted to try… to face my fears.” It wasn’t a lie, but it was a contradiction. She must have noticed, but she didn’t react.

“Alright.” She nodded, and wrote more. “Did you get a good look at the person, when they were attacking you? Anything?” She was talking to a killer.

“No,” I shook my head. “They attacked from behind. They didn’t say anything.” I’d killed hundreds of people and she had no idea.

“Nothing at all? Do you know if it was a male or a female assailant?”

“N-no,” I lied. “I really don’t know anything.” If they knew even something, even the smallest thing, it would link them to the one other survivor of a catastrophe of my design. I couldn’t let them. Jack was too good an actor. He’d push it back on me. He’d find a way. I couldn’t give them anything. No chances.

“Nothing?” The elder police officer echoed. “Do you know why someone would do something like this to you?”

“No, I… I don’t know why someone would do this. I guess I was bullied at school because I was new, but this…” I gestured to my shoulder. “I don’t know of anyone capable of something like this. I’m n-not sure that I even knew whoever did this to me.” I bit my lip. “I’m just kind of scared. I’ve heard things around the town, about things going on.” At least sounding terrified made sense, in this context. I didn’t have to pretend that part.

“Do you think you might be a victim of an attack without motive?” The woman asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to assume, but I don’t know how anyone could do this.” She paused in her writing, then nodded and scribbled something down quickly.

“Well, someone really wanted to rough you up, kid, no doubt about that. They really went above and beyond… I’ve never seen something like that before. I heard about your shoulder.”

“I’m lucky,” I smiled nervously. If only she knew about the state of luck I’ve had.

“Especially when someone brought you here, after.” She smiled. “You’ve got some kind of guardian angel watching over you, don’t you?”

“Lucky. I owe someone out there my life, to getting me somewhere safe.” There was a pang in my chest. I wanted Calce. I didn’t want this. Not this feeling. I wanted the calm again. I paused, looking between them. “Is that all, or could I be of more help?” I feigned a helpful smile. It came out as more a grimace.

“I think that’s all.” Officer Morrison put away her notebook and offered an apologetic smile. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, or make you feel uncomfortable, it’s obvious you’ve been through a lot. We’re here for you, kid. And now you don’t have to go down to the station. A little easier for all of us, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” I was unsure what else to say. Ask them to tell my father thank you. What a hollow apology. I couldn’t. I had to stop. I couldn’t keep playing this game anymore. I couldn’t pretend he cared. It would only hurt more.

“I’ll leave you to heal.” Officer Smith was already leaving with one last glance back at me. I swore it looked suspicious. “Take your time, and be careful out there. And don’t go into the forest again.” She chuckled. “Maybe you got a right to be scared?” When she saw how white my face was, her smile disappeared. “Sorry, maybe that was a little tone deaf of me. Small town talk, you know? You’ll be alright.” 

“Maybe.”

They left, closing the door behind them.

“Calce,” I whimpered to the empty room as I collapsed against the bed. Tears threatening to fall, but I couldn’t cry now. It was stupid. I’d already gotten over the hurdle. “Calce-”

“I’m here, Andrew.” Her voice soft against my ear. She was already at my side, transformed as she leaned over the bed. She’d gotten out of the backpack on her own, hidden on the side of the bed pressed close to the wall. Her luminous eyes were drooped in sadness as she carefully stroked the side of my head. She didn’t pause when she reached a bruise, even when I winced.

“Thank you,” I pressed against her hand. I didn’t care how much it hurt. I wasn’t alone.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I asked in surprise.

Her shoulders dropped. “I wasn’t fast enough,” she swore under her breath. “I let this happen to you. I’'s my fault. I’m the one that made you go in that forest. If I had just listened to you- if I had just done what you asked…” Her voice didn’t waver, but it was still full of pain.

“You saved me.” I risked closing my eyes and let her stroke my hair. “That’s all that matters.”

“I was stupid, playing games. I should have known there was something off, but I thought it was nothing. I didn’t realize how much danger we were in, and I didn’t get to you until it was far too late. He got away. I didn’t do my job and now he’s still out there.”

“Since when is this your job? You did everything you could. Neither of us could have known.” To my surprise, trying to ease her guilt made me forget mine. I had no idea how, but I was just happy it worked.

“… If I wasn’t here, this never would have happened to you.” She finally said. This time, her voice did choke up.

“If you weren’t here, you’d be stuck in hell, right?” I smiled at her tentatively, but she only looked more forlorn.

“You’d be safe.”

“If you weren’t here, maybe Peter Michaels really would have killed me. Not to mention, if I didn’t have you, then I wouldn’t have someone I could trust. I wouldn’t have someone that I could feel calm with. I… I wouldn’t have anyone at all, without you.”

Her eyes were wide, staring at me.

“That’s why I don’t care if this happened to me,” I added. “I only care about having you. You’re my protector.” I grimaced. “You heard the police. I got my own guardian angel, and I’m not about to let her go because she wasn’t fast enough.” She didn’t seem to know what to do when I hugged her, frozen in shock at first. Then she wrapped her arms just as tightly around me. My shoulder was on fire, but I didn’t care. She was there.

She was the one to pull away, as reluctantly as I felt. “I should go back to hiding.”

“We could rest for a little longer,” I argued, still holding onto her arm. I didn’t want her to go. “You and I.”

“I’ll be seen,” she poked my cheek with a grin. “I get you’re happy to see me. But we’ll have time. Besides, I need to feed off you soon anyways. It’d be better if you get home sooner rather than later.”

“Fine, fine.” I grinned at her. The guilt melted away in my mind so easily, I forgot it had ever existed. “But if you’re going to bite me, you better not use too much blood.”

“Hey, if I’m hungry, I’m hungry. What else am I supposed to do, eat a chicken?”

“Yeah, why can’t you just eat animals?” She pulled her arm away just to poke my cheek again with a wry smirk.

“That’s like me asking you why you don’t just eat tree bark. No nutritional value.”

“What do you mean – there’s plenty of nutritional value in animals.”

“Not for me.” She shrugged. “You’re forgetting I’m a magical fucking demon, nothing makes sense anymore.”

I smiled. “Well for a magical demon I have to say, you’re one of the few things that feels like it makes sense in my life right now.” It wasn’t my imagination this time, when her cheeks went pink. But I could hear the nurse in the other room. It would have to wait. “Okay, now get back in the bag, squeaky toy.” 

“Yes, Summoner.” She rolled her eyes. The moment she was a little bat I shoved her into the backpack and closed it myself. I made it in time just as the nurse strolled into my room to check the painkillers.


	15. Know Your Enemy

After days feeling like weeks, this next week was stagnation unlike nothing else. At first, I could do nothing but rest, sleep, and heal in my room. It was the same four walls that I woke up to every morning and couldn’t leave but to carefully make my way to the bathroom. Along the way, I could hear the arguments downstairs. They never seemed to end.

“He can’t expect to stay under my roof without a sincere apology at least! The thrashing I’d get for that in my day… I bet I’ve been too soft.”

“Dear, maybe it’s best not to do anything, at least until he’s healed. You’re not in your right mind right now with this anger…” The worry in my mothers’ voice.

“This anger is nothing compared to how angry I’m going to be if that boy continues to treat me the way he has. He hit me! Me! His own flesh and blood father! He’s no son of mine if that’s the way he’s going to behave.” The fury in my fathers’.

“What if you two sat down, and just had a talk? I’m sure if both of you gave each other a chance, you could find yourselves reasonable people-”

“Talk, woman? You expect me to do that to my son? He’s meant to glorify his father and mother, respect us, treat us like he would his elders and yet he demands that I give him the treatment I would my equal. He’s not my equal, he’s my son, and he’s a child that doesn’t know what’s best for him. Sam was never like this. Sam didn’t cause all these problems for her parents.”

“But Sam didn’t have the same mind that Andrew did, dear. He’s… he’s always been his own type of person, reading and writing in his own way. He’s not like you or me. He’s not like any of us.”

“It doesn’t matter what his HOBBIES are, woman, what matters is how he treats his family. And he’s forsaken God, he’s forsaken me, he’s forsaken you – don’t you start crying, you told me the way he treated you in the hospital. That boy is a menace and he’s tearing out family apart! You know and I know it. We need to face the facts.” My mother had already broken down into tears again.

Every time I heard her defend me, my heart would drop a little more. I made my visits to the bathroom as quick as possible. I couldn’t deal with anymore yelling knowing I was the cause. Listening to my mother taking the verbal violence that was meant for me was too much, the same as listening to my father use my anger as ammunition to turn her against me. I had been so wrong, and now I was paying for it.

Leaving my room always left me more depressed than before.

“Summoner.” Calce grinned the same way she always did when I returned.

“Hey,” I muttered. Sometimes I’d find her on my bed, other times sneaking about on the floor. This time she was whirling around on my computer chair. She had her own problems, having to stay in a room with me. Both having to protect me and not being able to leave my presence meant that she was a prisoner in this room just as much as I was, and I could tell she hated it. When I wasn’t busy sleeping and healing, she was pacing the room, or bounding around desperately looking for something to do. Sometimes I worried that one of these days I’d wake up to her tearing my room to shreds like an overactive retriever. She didn’t blame me, though. I would have, at this point. But she’d gotten used to my mood dropped each time I left the room. There was no point to asking how I felt, she already knew.

I couldn’t stand being stuck in here, doing nothing but waiting. Calce and I both knew Jack was still out there. Both of us were just waiting for him to strike again. And we were doing what, waiting to go back to school? Doing nothing?

“You know, these computers are pretty interesting,” Calce called conversationally from the chair as I struggled to get back into bed. “I mean, I get what it’s trying to be… But every time it loads I want to smash it.” My shoulder collided with the headboard and a white-hot pain split my head open in a headache. I had to remind myself I was lucky not to need surgery, I was lucky it had no signs of infection, I was lucky that I’d be able to leave in a week and get out of this miserable room. That didn’t lessen how much it hurt.

“Yes,” I muttered through gritted teeth. The sharp pain from my shoulder slowly subsided again, but the ache in my head wasn’t going to end any time soon. “They’re great.” Great at being useless. Scrolling through nothing and looking at nothing. I was slowly going insane, being stuck in this room. Not even Calce could fix that. I lay awake for hours, listening to her occasionally try to start a conversation only to let it drop when she realized I had no intention of trying to respond. The two of us were at a standstill. We wasted away, and it was because I was the weak link unable to get myself out of bed without nearly debilitating pain.

I’d never felt so defeated before. Jack was out there. My parents were a ticking time bomb. There was no telling if the police would ever find a way to link things back to me. And my soul was still going to hell. My mind was mush, going over the same things over and over again and never coming to a solution other than the consensus that I was thoroughly fucked.

“You look pretty sad, lying there, you know,” Calce called over. “Like a mummy wrapped in bandages.”

“I might as well wait for death,” I sighed.

“You know, my ex was Egyptian.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know you don’t care. You haven’t cared about anything lately. And again, I say, pretty sad.” There was no vitriol to her. I wish she would be angrier. Then at least I could have someone to fight with.

She looked over at the computer. “I don’t really want to learn anything about myself, but I’d bet she’s somewhere on here… I wonder how far back history like that goes.”

It happened all at once. I shot up in bed, staring at Calce. “I have an idea.”

“What? What is it? Does it involve me going outside?” She jumped off the chair immediately, flying to my side with hopeful eyes and a lopsided grin. If I was going stir crazy, then the off-the-walls demon must have had it infinitely worse. She was desperate to leave, and I didn’t blame her.

“Have you kill Jack,” I resounded. Immediately, she deflated with a groan.

“I’m stuck to you, remember? I can’t go anywhere as long as you’re out of commission, and you are definitely still out of commission.” She poked my shoulder and even the light touch had me wincing.

“Well what’s with you wanting to go outside then?” I looked at her incredulously, and she shrugged with a sheepish grin.

“Flying a few feet away is still going outside.”

“You can do that if you want, but that’s not what I’m thinking of. I can’t do anything in the state I’m in right now, I’m basically useless. We can’t barge in and go after him – we don’t even know where he is. But think about it. Don’t you see what you just said?”

“I regret to inform you that that is not my strong suit.”

“Well, what am I, Calce?”

“A nerd,” she replied instantly.

I sighed, rubbing my face. “No. A warlock.”

She squinted. “… I guess if you look at it the right way-”

“No, I am a warlock.” I prodded her shoulder back. “And what do warlocks do?”

“Summon demons.”

“That’s one of those things, yes, but what else?”

“General magic? … Control demons.” She frowned. “Are you going to control Jack? How do you plan to manage that? How did I say anything like that?”

“Well, that’s the thing, I don’t know how. I don’t know anything about magic, in fact. I’m completely in the dark, and I have been since summoning you. So we don’t have anything to our advantage right now. But we could.”

“So… How is this a plan?”

“It’s not really but you said it yourself, I can learn. I’m supposed to be all about learning what a warlock can do, so there has to be something. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places before.” I gestured to the computer. “Research is the name of the game. Grab my laptop. There has to be something I can use, maybe a kick start in the right direction.” I raised an eyebrow at her with a faint smirk. “Plus I got that book that I used to summon you with. Oh wait. It was burned to ashes.” She looked away, whistling and shoved her hands into her pant pockets. “Thanks, Calce.”

“Well, you gotta admit that book probably would have done jack shit,” she argued. “It was all reworked stuff that had nothing to do with actual demon summoning. Honestly, it shouldn’t have worked on me.” She paused, then looked to me with a grin. “But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? You were willful enough to summon me with a book that shouldn’t have worked. And now you got me to help provide you with any extra fire power.”

“If only I still had that damned book then. And does having a familiar really do anything to the magic I use?” She grabbed the laptop and practically whipped it at me. I flinched as it safely landed on my bed and grabbed it before she could abuse my technology any further.

“Well, you’re the one with a plan here. Find out. Maybe there’s something on there. You acted before like it held the answers to the universe.”

“I did,” I mumbled as I scrolled through various search windows. “But it seems to have this way of never finding exactly what I’m looking for. As soon as I want something, its out of my grasp…” I sighed. “Well. Let’s do what I signed up for. I’m supposed to be a warlock, so I’m going to do warlock things… I don’t suppose you would happen to know of where I can start here. Any latent abilities? Something I can do spur of the moment to protect myself?”

“I don’t know why you still bother asking me. I just know that book you had was a piece of crap, you can summon demons, and Jack said something about you having a strong will so that’s all I got here.”

“Not much to go off of.” I narrowed my eyes at the screen in frustration.

“Maybe not, but it looks like you got yourself a plan.” She said back on the computer chair and grabbed her favorite chew toy. The football looked more like a flat piece of leather at this point.

“It’s not a plan, per say. I have no idea how I can stop him. He’s not as strong as you, but he’s smarter. He’s going to try to find a way to get us alone, and do what he did last time. Other than you staying at my side constantly, I’m not sure how to counteract that. But you always being there isn’t realistic.”

“Why not?” I glanced up with a raised eyebrow.

“Have you taken a look at yourself recently?”

“I could try a disguise. I’ve played a helpless little girl more than a few times in my life.”

“I… I don’t want to know but that’s not what I’m talking about. You spend a lot of time running around off in your own head because you haven’t had freedom in a long time. Your mind tends to… Wander…” I trailed off when I realized she wasn’t listening anymore. She was too busy chewing on the football. I turned back to the computer. “Anyways. I can’t rely on you all the time. As useful as you are, you’re a liability when you’re not focused.”

“Who’s a liability?”

“Exactly. Just stay there, and try not to break anything while I’m researching.”

“No promises.”

I resigned myself to looking through page after page of occult sites. New age magic, pranks that ended up as trailers for upcoming movies, completely unfounded evidence that had nothing to do with the mechanics of the demonic world I had entered. It was like nothing I had experienced even existed before I found it. But that couldn’t be true. Jack had discovered, and so had I, so there had to be instances of people posting this sort of thing online in the past. Maybe even a video if I was lucky. But… nothing was sticking. An hour later I lay back against the bed with a groan that sharpened with my shoulder collided with the headboard again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing of use,” I showed her the last ten sites I’d checked all in varying states of disarray. “I can’t find even the basics. But maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. It seems everything I look at doesn’t even follow the same logic we’ve been working in. Maybe I should be considering an exorcism, or something.”

She looked like she’d swallowed a bug. “That could be a problem when your own demon can’t leave your presence.”

“Calm down, I realize that. Which is why I’m not really going to bother. How could I even do that anyways? I’m no priest.” She looked thoughtful.

“Not that I’m trying to encourage this in any way but… Your father?”

“A protestant preacher?” I raised an eyebrow. “No. That wouldn’t exactly work out. And I really, really wouldn’t want him knowing anything about this. I have no idea just how he’d react to his son having a demon as a pet but it wouldn’t be good.”

“Am I a pet now?” She grinned.

“Sure, squeaky toy, you are.” I stared blankly at the screen, wracking my head for anything. “… I guess I could try narrowing my search to historical searches. Everything new is useless… Makes me wonder how it’s like that when at least Jack and I both managed to summon something. You’d think there would be videos, messages, something out there. But nothing.”

“Strange,” Calce admitted. She slowly nudged herself closer as I typed, until she slid off the computer chair and onto my bed. Her hair tickled my nose as she peered closer to look at the screen. “Just how far back are you going? This is ancient Greek.”

I flushed and tentatively nudged her away. “I have to start somewhere.”

“Well, you’re the one with the plan. But wouldn’t it be better to start with Christianity, at least?”

“I thought about that, but you said that your ex was Egyptian, and that doesn’t make any sense. If she was proto-Christian, then whatever made her is older than a religion like that. Which means that the Christian God and Devil is older than the actual written work about them, to the point that I could possibly find something of use from the more polytheistic Gods of previous cultures. Maybe there’s some kind of thing that stuck and continued over onto Christianity, but it was called something else before.” I pointed at a passage on the screen. “Here, they’re even talking about harnessing the power of an evil cacodaemon. They had their own versions, they just weren’t biblical. Everything changes over time as new religions adapt, and new different languages and terms are used. But… It seems for the most part that there’s always an underworld, some kind of good place and bad place, and inhabitants in both.”

“But is any of this true?” She butted her head against my chest, struggling to get closer to look at the pictures. She kept nudging her head closer and closer. I lay the computer between us for her to see. “That’s all myths and stuff. Maybe none of its true. Maybe it’s all just mumbo jumbo made up or other humans later down the line found an old book or something and took it at face value. I’ve never seen an angel, and I’ve never seen a God. Hell, I’ve never even seen the Devil.”

“That’s… certainly possible. But,” I argued. “That’s how I felt about the bible before, that it was all theoretical storytelling. However that’s not entirely true, because you’re here, and we already saw what Jack was capable of. So I’m tempted to think that more about mythology is real than I first thought of.”

“What if only demons are real?”

“Well then we’re fucked now aren’t we? But I’m trying to go with your world’s logic, if my own is entirely useless now. And by that logic, I feel like a hierarchal system is in place… Maybe. I’m not sure of anything. This says I’m more powerful with you though. I’m inclined to agree, otherwise I feel like there wouldn’t be much utilitarian sense to have a familiar in the first place.” I continued to scroll down, looking at the slow evolution of magic.

“Well, I’m a bodyguard, that’s good enough, right?”

“It’s more than that.” I pointed out various other old world examples. “A familiar is part of a deal for power and information. You’re supposed to have this knowledge that I couldn’t possibly be able to get on your own, along with an inner demonic strength that I could never achieve. You’re meant to be some kind of extension of my abilities, along with being an encyclopedia so I know how to get stronger.”

“That wasn’t in any contract,” she sniffed.

“Well, they also say that familiar are relatively weak demons, if we’re going off this article’s logic… And again, this is assuming any of this is real. But if so, I’m alright with exchanging knowledge for strength.” She ducked her head before I could catch her.

“Yeah, yeah… Well, keep reading.” I went back to the article and furrowed my brows.

“I’m not sure if I should even be following this logic. There’s so much misinformation, I don’t even know what to follow. I suppose the older the source, the more likely it is to be the original and true one, but everything keeps overlapping- wait.” When it got to Rome, I paused. “There’s information about protective spells here. And these are old. Very old.” I squinted, fixing my glasses. “They’re cross referenced with ancient manuscripts from Egypt.”

“What? Where?” Completely forgetting herself, she was back to pushing and shoving to get a closer look even with the laptop clearly in sight.

“Stop looking at the naked fertility statues, it’s right there.” I jabbed a finger at the screen to point towards an amulet. “You wear it to protect yourself from evil spirits. It’s made out of gold, invoking the Goddess Hecate or Hermes, with a lot of…” I turned my head to the side. “Strange glyphs, then you’re protected from something evil.” I stared at the screen for a second, then my eyes widened. “Oh God… I’m an idiot.”

“Are you? You’re sounding kind of smart right now. Confusing, but smart. Pure gold? Where are we going to get that?”

“It’s not gold we need. You were right, I was going too far back. We have everything we need to protect me from Jack.” I grinned at her. “My dad’s a pastor. There’s crucifixes all over the house.”

“Well… Yeah, they give me a headache,” she meandered with a tentative drawl. “Are you going to throw them all over the room? Because I don’t think I could stand something like that.”

“I’m going to start wearing one, at least. This older mythos is good for figuring out power, but the bible is all about protecting yourself from demons… at least, when demons are involved. And it usually involves prayer. If I want to control Jack, then these older charms would come in handy, but do we really need to control him when we could just repel him completely? Maybe that’s why he hasn’t even been coming in the house. If I just keep a bunch on my person…” I finally noticed her frown, and sighed. “I’ll take it off when I know it’s safe, but it’s a precaution I shouldn’t take for granted. For now, at least. Gold, silver, cold iron, old metals like that will be useful, especially for runes to get him to do my bidding. If any of what I’m researching is real. But saying that is easier than actually finding those things and somehow making them into talismans to keep me safe. Some of the ingredients required are… Kind of strange.” The animal body parts got weirder the further I scrolled down the list. “But the only other way to get rid of a demon is through the Christian religious means, and that’s not available to us. That doesn’t mean that we can’t use something Christian to keep him away, though.”

“I still don’t like this idea,” she whined. “How am I going to be able to protect you when you’re a walking pinnacle of a religion meant to repel me?” 

Fighting fire with fire isn’t enough, and we’re not even sure any of this works. It would require time and trial and error. And with my life on the line, those are on a long list of things I don’t have. A crucifix could buy me time.” I sighed, and closed the laptop. “What if those talismans hurt you as well? What if they did nothing at all? How would I even get cold iron, or enough gold for something the size of a coin? And there’s one more problem.”

“What- Hey I was looking at that.” She grabbed the computer and opened it again to look through the pictures. “It can’t be as bad as having to find rare materials like gold, right? You can just sift through your mom’s jewels or something.”

“No way in hell am I doing that, but it’s worse. The only way to get rid of a demon for good, is an exorcism. Everything I’ve seen that looks even the least bit pertinent to what we want, says that there’s no other way. Even if you kill the body of the person, there’s no way to get the demon to leave.” I never thought my horror movie knowledge would come in handy, but an uncanny amount seemed to overlap. “It continues on in the ether as a formless and invisible thing that will just continue to whip sticks until another one pierces my shoulder. So, the only thing I’m left with is an exorcism. Which never seem to go well in the movies. And I’m no priest. I can’t read Latin. I only ever see that kind of thing in movies anyways.”

“… Well don’t close the computer and go back to moping.” She shoved the thing back in my face. “Learn Latin. Movies are just movies.”

“But we already know it’s not going to work. I’ll end up sending you back to hell if I’m not careful.” I looked at her earnestly. She paused, seeming to way her options, but the mischievous light in her eyes seemed to fade as she came to her own conclusion.

“If that’s the only way to do it, then we’ll do it. Whatever happens… It’s going to make you safe, right? Maybe I just need to plug my ears and close my eyes.” She smiled.

“I… Guess.” I brought the laptop closer and buckled back into researching, but my hands paused over the screen. I couldn’t focus on the words. “Calce?”

“Yeah?” She ducked her head back in. “What is it?”

“If we can’t get through this… If everything starts falling down...”

“We’ll find a way,” she said adamantly. “It’s going to be okay. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. And when you do, I’ll be there to make sure it happens without a hitch.”

“But if I do an exorcism… Somehow, and it works, and you leave too…”

“Well… Then it works. And you’re safe.”

“No, I’m not.”

“No demons.” She shrugged.

“That’s not the point-” I tugged her closer despite the overwhelming pain from use of my shoulder. “If anything happens, that’s something we’re not going to do. There’s no room in the plan for losing you, alright? I’ve already lost more than enough, and you’re the one thing I’ve got left.”

“… You got your family, don’t you?”

“The ones that fight about whether or not they should send me away every chance they get?” I smiled sadly. “They’re there to get me out of a tight spot, but I can’t depend on them for this… And they can never be my friends. I… I’m not sure I’m any good at making friends.”

“Save that sort of talk for when you get better.” She pressed her face against my chest with a sigh. “I remember a certain cousin of yours from before. Plus, there’s the rest of the school that didn’t explode. So don’t count yourself out yet.”

“Wouldn’t you want to be the only one?” I stroked her hair absently as I continued scrolling. I didn’t seem to realize what I was doing until moments later, but by then neither of us seemed to care enough to mention it.

“I mean, it’d be kind of nice, I guess. You and I, taking over the world. But I doubt you could live in a bubble.”

I nodded, trying very hard to focus on the computer, when I realized what she had said.

“Sarah.”

“What about her?”

“Maybe she’ll know what to do. We’ve been stuck in this constant circle bouncing ideas off each other, but you don’t know much of anything and all I’m doing is feeling around in the dark. I’ve been so engrossed in this world, maybe there’s something I’m not seeing that’s right in front of me. Maybe she’s got something that could help us.” Feeling more at ease, I clicked through link after link not caring that I could never seem to get what I wanted. “Even just talking to her would be nice…”

Someone my own age. A friend. Someone alive. It could be just the thing I needed.

If only my shoulder would heal faster.


	16. The Best Advice You can Give

“Run the hell away.”

The water went down the wrong pipe. As I coughed up a lung, Sarah crossed her arms and grimaced as she waited for me to finish. My supposed friends’ hands were shaking, but I was too busy trying to get the water from reaching my nose. Sitting at the table across from me, she hadn’t even touched her food. I was too hungry to do the same. After spending so much time with little appetite, now that the pain meds weren’t messing with my head I was left starving. I’d been waiting, aching to get her opinion as soon as I’d been strong enough. And now I’d lost my appetite again.

“What?” I gasped in a rough whisper. I kept my voice down, same as her. A boisterous attitude didn’t fit the mood of the school. Only half of the students in my class had showed up the day I returned, and the lunch room was scarce. No one talked to each other in the halls. Everyone was afraid to even look at each other. Death wasn’t a normal part of anyone’s lives. The aftermath of losing so many was this… This subtle fear. When I looked at someone they’d turn around and keep walking. People had lost friends. Whole groups of students that used to be together in the halls walking and talking were reduced to a single individual who had been sick the day of the party. Their haunted eyes made me keep walking.

I’d never felt anything more sobering. Everyone else had grown up in the span of a week, the same as me. Only they’d been forced to. Sometimes I couldn’t tell anymore if people were missing because they were grieving or… If they were gone. There was faint sobbing down every hallway stemming from a desolate bathroom. A hush you could feel more than hear fell over the school. The teachers whispered behind closed doors about moving to the city. One thing was clear; you weren’t to talk about what happened. Even now as I spoke to Sarah as loud as I dared, we still got the occasional look. It made more than a few of the small remainder leave the lunchroom to cry.

I stared at my hands and tried not to let the guilt sink in.

“What else could you do, realistically?” She asked.

“I… I don’t know. I thought maybe the crosses would be enough,” I trailed off. Telling Sarah what happened was like ripping off a bandage. Even now, she wouldn’t look me in the eye. It had taken ages just to get her to talk to me again, and then it was only to tell me to keep talking. She sat across from me with her eyes constantly flicking back and forth. She was afraid. Just like everyone else, except worse. Because she knew what had happened, and she knew no police were ever going to be able stop it.

“It wouldn’t be. If this thing is after you that badly, then it’s going to try again, and it’s not going to stop just because you have some crosses around your neck. It’s got telekinesis. It can just throw things at you until you go down like you did before. It doesn’t need to get close but if you wear it, then your own… Thing can’t keep you “safe.” No one is safe.”

A squeak emerged from my backpack that lay forgotten beside me. I nudged it under the lunchroom table inconspicuously. “Shush, squeaky toy.” Sarah flinched, glancing down to stare hard at her cold slice of pizza.

“And you should get rid of it while you still can.” She muttered under her breath, then grew even quieter. “I can’t believe you’re not taking this seriously.”

“Wait.” I looked up incredulously to her and sat the water bottle down on the table. “After all I said? That whole story about Calce saving my life, and you want me to get rid of her? She’s the one part of this I thought you wouldn’t be afraid of. I need her, Sarah.”

“I listened to it all, Andrew. I let you speak and I tried not to judge. You’ve been doing everything she says, and that’s your problem. She’s pulling the strings, and I can see you getting swept up into something that hurts people. Not just hurting but…” She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Andrew, you’re messing with demons. The same thing that “protected you” is also the one that got you into this mess in the first place. I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re continuing to associate with her. Or any of this. More than a hundred people are dead because of you. I don’t want to believe that you’re the bad guy here. But… I can’t help it. You did that. You’re treating this like it’s some kind of game.”

“I’m not the bad guy,” I muttered. “It was either that, or bringing about the apocalypse for this town. I’m not trying to diminish what happened. I wanted to tell you because you deserved to know. I go with what Calce says sometimes because she has experience I don’t. If I was going to run away without her, there would be nothing but those crosses to protect me.”

She swore under her breath. “You’re using a demon to protect you from another demon. That doesn’t sound right to me. You killed everyone, rather than let them be resigned to a different fate. You were judge, jury and executioner. Dean is dead, Andrew. Raymond. Jesse. The few people you thought were friends here. God, the only reason most of my friends are alive is because I told them that frat was bad news. But some of them still went, Andrew.” Her breath caught in her throat. “I wasn’t too close to the ones that went anyways but it doesn’t matter. People are dead. People don’t deserve to die because of a choice that you made. I’m not sure if I should be giving you advice, or turning you in.”

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s too complicated for you to just be sorry. This is more than that. Infinitely more.” She pushed her food away. “You don’t get it. And I don’t either. This thing is bigger than both of us. If you had let things go as this demon planned, maybe the situation would be even worse. Or maybe it would be better. We’ll never know now, because there’s no chance for you to fix it. You can’t go back in time and save people.”

“I know.” I lowered my head. “I know I made a rash decision. I didn’t know it would lead to this. I thought that if I stopped it, they’d be safe. I had… I had no way of knowing Sarah, believe me. I wish I could do something. I did it because I thought that it would save everyone.”

“… You’re not capable of hurting people on purpose,” she said reluctantly, too slowly. “I just… I don’t know who else to blame here. It’s like the world changed a week ago. Suddenly everyone’s afraid, half the kids are dead and no one wants to talk about anything with anyone because everyone’s thinking there’s a domestic terrorist in our midst. There’s a curfew now, you know.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I… I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Then…” She leaned forward to look me in the eye, though her voice still wavered. “Then listen. I didn’t believe in it and neither did you. I get that you don’t have all the answers. Neither do I. But this town seems to break the longer you stay here. It’s getting worse because of these demons and if you take one with you, the other will probably follow. You’d get away from your dad, away from anything that could incriminate you, and if you’re so insistent… Then a bodyguard to keep you safe. If that’s what you want.”

“But running away from everything? Isn’t that cowardly?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to lead Jack around just running from place to place and hoping he never finds me.”

“You’d be the one in real danger, not us. What’s so cowardly about living another day? This isn’t a superhero movie, Andrew. This is one of your horrors, and a realistic one at that. And what do realistic people do in those horror movies in order to survive them?”

“… Get the hell out of dodge.” I dropped my head, then sighed. “But where would I go? There’s no where to run to. I can’t call the police. I can’t call for help. Even my parents… All I have to fall back on is Calce.”

“Yeah. You’re right. You got no one except me. If you want to be generous, then the other demon too.” She closed her eyes. “But you can’t stay here if you want to stay alive. That’s all I can really say here. The crosses, the things you researched, do you really think that’s going to keep him away?”

“Yes.” I said adamantly. “The only thing I have to go off of is pop culture, and ancient history. Those two both say that Christianity iconography will repel a demon. So, I’m inclined to believe it.”

“Faulty logic.”

“I think you’re dismissing it too quickly. There could still be something I haven’t researched, something that could get him gone once and for all. There’s bound to be books on the subject if Jack found one already. Maybe I could find them in a library. Not one here of course, but I could try taking a trip to the city and looking there.”

“And waste more time getting hunted and hurting everyone else in this town going back and forth. Run away then, and find yourself a library. Go find where Jack got that book in the first place.”

“I can’t just run… I… It took Jack ages to amass the ability to summon that, and he had a book that was filled with authentic knowledge to help him. I don’t even know where he got it. But I have will that he doesn’t. I have Calce.”

“Honestly I’m not sure why I’m even bothering to deal with your logic here. This is fucked, Andrew. All of this is fucked. You’re not listening. You say you have more power, then you say you wouldn’t be able to do it. You say you want to find a book to help you, then you say you can’t just run away and live to fight another day.”

“I haven’t got the answers yet, but I wanted to bounce ideas off of you before I started going off in all directions. I just wanted someone to talk to, I’m not here for you to give a definitive answer. That’s why I’m asking you. You’re my second opinion here.”

“Your second opinion says you’re fucked.”

“Thanks.” 

“You’re too indecisive. Banking so much on finding something that you and I shouldn’t even have to understand. This world wasn’t meant to be navigated by us-”

“Because it’s built to allow me to summon a demon in the first place, I intend to disagree-”

“But. There’s no opportunity here for you to deliberate. If you’re not going to follow any other advice I might give you, then the answer is simple and you’re only saying no because you don’t want to be uprooted. Run away. Get as far away from this as you can.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t just leave things be.”

She dropped her head closer to mine. “Andrew. I’m going to be really clear right now, okay? You can’t play games. You can’t pretend that this is fine. You can’t sit around and go through book after fictional book and think you know anything about the forces you’re messing with. They are infinitely smarter and stronger than you. I used to think it was bullshit, but I didn’t sit still when you told me about Calce either, okay? I did my own research. And everything I’ve ever learned about this says that this is a terrible idea and you should get rid of it as soon as physically possible. Don’t play with it. Don’t learn from it. Don’t even try to understand it. Just wash your hands of the problem as soon as you can. Run away.”

“I’m not getting rid of Calce,” I repeated, gritting my teeth.

“Then get rid of everything else and run.”

“And leave everything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Maybe it’s better if…” She gritted her teeth.

“If I died.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m not a demon, Sarah.”

“I know you’re not.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I’m not a demon. You want me out of here, by any means possible. Even if it means my death. I’m not a monster.” My face heated, but I wasn’t going to cry here. Not now. “I didn’t even consider hurting my parents even though I know something’s coming, because I’m not a monster. I’m not, because every time I go over what happens in my head, I break a little more inside. People died. I let people die. It was either possession or death, and I picked it for them. And now I’m faced with another choice. And even now with you I don’t know what to do.” My stomach was tying itself in knots. “I’m not some strong character in a survival horror, Sarah. I’m a kid. I’d be running away from home. Throwing my life away.”

“Andrew, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just scared. Okay? I’m not used to being scared. You’re not a monster.”

I pushed my own tray away. Now I really wasn’t hungry. “I don’t know if I should have ever told you. I barely know you.” Not a friend. I was tired of feeling so weak and pathetic because of things other people tried to push on me.

“You’re not a monster, you’re… You’re a victim. Like the rest of us.”

“You don’t believe that. You know that I pulled the trigger. You know those people’s lives were in my hands and I snuffed them out. I get it. It’s terrible. Calce told me not to think about it, because she knew it would lead me completely losing myself. And she was right.”

“Calce isn’t always right.” 

“I know. Her attention span nearly got me killed. I’m not stupid. But it doesn’t matter if she isn’t. She’s shown me that the world we know about demons isn’t exactly cut and dry good and evil. And if there’s anyone I need right now, it’s someone strong enough to keep me safe while I find out a way to solve my own problems.”

“I know you want to be safe. We all want to be safe. I don’t want to be your enemy here.” Sarah stood up.

“Okay. You want me safe and gone.”

“No I just- can I come sit with you?”

“I don’t know. Can you? Are you sure you can afford the danger of sitting beside me?”

“Stop being a melodramatic asshole.” She slid in beside me with a light punch to my shoulder, grabbing her tray to take a tentative nibble from the pizza. “I’m not just trying to throw you away because I’m afraid. That’s a part of it, I’m not going to deny that. I don’t want anyone else to die because you think you’re a hero. But what other choice is there? It would buy you time, wouldn’t it? Give you a chance to figure out how to kill Jack? You’d have access to the libraries you want, as long as you need them.”

“I guess.” I poked at my food.

“I have some money if you need it. It’ll get you started.”

“I guess.”

“Andrew. I know it’s hard.” I would leave everything behind me.

“No, you don’t.”

“Maybe I don’t. I don’t have to leave. But it works, doesn’t it?” I didn’t want to think about it. I hated that it worked. The only solution not to have any glaring holes in it so far. And it meant I’d have to uproot everything and leave.

I glanced under the table to the unmoving backpack, then wiped my eyes.

“Okay,” I said, looking back up to Sarah. “I’ll go. If you can help me with funds, I’ll pay you back when I can.”

“That should be the least of your worries right now. Focus on packing and finding a way out. I might be able to get someone to drive you, if you give me a day or two.”

“To the city, then.” I let out a shuddering breath, then bit into my own food. “I’ll find a library, get lost in the crowds, and find a way to get rid of Jack. Maybe even find a priest that can do it for me.”

“That last bit sounds like a pipe dream. But it’s better than nothing.” She nudged my shoulder with a tentative grin. “And better than sticking crosses all over you.”

“I still think that crosses would help,” I countered, but smiled back nonetheless. But it still felt a bit forced. I still knew she cared more about keeping her and the town safe. Maybe that was for the best. “Just, maybe for now. Until you can find someone to get me out of here. Then… I’ll let the city be the thing to keep me safe. Like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Good luck. And I’m sorry. About being afraid, and treating you like that.”

“You said what I was thinking.” I lowered my gaze to my food. “That’s all.”

“It doesn’t make it hurt any less.” No. It made me realize the only way I could rely on her was if I showed her I had no intention of staying.

“Yeah. But it’s still true.”

“Well- Your bat alarm is going off.” The squeaking from the bag had been growing louder. I hadn’t really noticed, but at this point it was impossible to ignore.

“Sounds like I better answer it,” I sighed, reaching under the table to shoulder the pack.

“What do you think she wants?”

“A word in edgewise. I’ll talk with her. But I am leaving.” I nodded at her as I stood. “That’s not changing.”

“I hope not. If she tries to change your mind, I’ll fight her for you.”

“Sarah, please trust me in saying that you would lose, and I would come to your funeral if you tried. The last thing I need is girls fighting over me.”

“Ew.” She laughed. “When you have to pick between summon-a-demon-express and your cousin, you must be starved for choice.” She waved me off, and I left to the nearest boys’ washroom. For a moment I was thankful at the utter ghost town the school had become. Closing the door, laying the backpack on the ground and unzipping it for the large bat to fly about, I retreated to the door and kept my body between it and the demon. I didn’t have to worry about anyone sneaking in though, and that made Calce’s transformation much less nerve-wracking.

In a flash, she was pacing the bathroom back and forth with her entire body wired. I leaned back against the door, waiting for her to finally get her words out. The pacing made me nervous. I was reminded of being locked in with a caged aggressive animal. Not angry at the moment, but it still rumbled just beneath the surface. She seemed nervous too. Anxious even.

“Run away?” She finally asked with an abrupt turn to me. “Are you okay with that? Just up and leaving?”

“There’s no other choice. We don’t have the ability to fight him the way we are now.”

“We d-” She bit her lip, then snarled and went back to pacing. She ran a hand through her hair, her eyes darting from stall to stall.

“He’s not waiting for us in here. I don’t know why you’re upset.”

“I’m… I’m angry because it’s a fucking twerp of a demon that I can’t sink my claws in. I can’t fix it. I can’t keep you safe. There’s nothing I can do. I’m stuck here and you’re leaving and I can’t do anything but be a carryon chew toy. You and that girl spent the whole time going back and forth and it’s just reminding me that Jack is still out there.” She growled. “I don’t know what to do but this seems so…”

“You couldn’t have known he was alive, Calce. But we have to move on from that.”

“He ran from that blast. He knew ahead of time and he escaped. He’s demon, he could have just possessed someone else. Of course he’d come back for you. Of course he’s out to get you. This place is a death trap and we’ve just been waiting here. Crosses wouldn’t fix it. Nothing will.” She punched her own head with a growl. “Stupid stupid stupid stupid!”

I grabbed her arm and tore it away from her. “You’re not stupid! We have way too much guilt on our shoulders already, alright? We don’t need even more because you hate that you couldn’t protect me. One little slip up is nothing. I’m alive. I’m safe. And it’s not going to happen again because this time you’re going to be prepared, right?”

She faltered, blinking at me as if pulled from a dream. “… I’m prepared. But I’m not… I’m not sure anymore.”

“Where’s your confidence gone?” I gave her a teasing smile. “You’re way stronger than him, aren’t you?”

“I’m not smarter. And I can’t fight things that move on their own. He plays mind games, Andrew. I can’t fight mind games. You were lying on the ground, looking like you were dying, you know.” Her grip on my hand was as tight as iron. “I don’t want that to happen. Humans are too weak to go through things like that. You’re squishy. Like jellyfish.”

“I’m not that squishy, I promise. And when we learn more about how to solve this, with actual books from an actual library on extensive magical knowledge, then I’ll be able to solve this myself. But until then, we need to run, okay?”

“No.”

“But you said yourself, you can’t fight him.”

“No but- I… I just don’t like it.”

“Where is this coming from? We already talked about this,” I tried to pull her closer, but she let my hand drop. “You know it’s not your fault.”

“You have to leave because of me.”

“I’d have to leave anyways. You think I can be around my family after this?”

She wrinkled her nose. “… I don’t like it.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I asked. She paused. The silence was enough of an answer. “You know you can tell me, right? You can talk to me about anything. We’re supposed to trust each other.”

“I… It wouldn’t matter,” she sighed. “More strength is nothing to something like him. What can we do, but run?” She grimaced. “I hate it. I hate turning my back to an enemy, especially when for the first time, I’m actually supposed to be protecting something. I feel so stupid when I can’t even do that. We have to leave, because I’m not strong enough. You have to uproot your world, because I can’t… But I could. I feel like I could but I know that I can’t.” She resigned to patting my shoulder with a grin so tired she looked like she hadn’t slept in years. “I can protect you from any regular humans along the way, then. Maybe even rob a bank, if that’s what you need.”

I ruffled her hair. “I don’t think I’ll need that, Sarah’s already offering us something as a head start. We should be fine.”

“Mug a man for you then.”

“No, Calce.” I sighed.

“Kill a man? Two bird with one stone then. Blood for me, safety for you.”

“No- you have my blood I don’t need your hurting people.”

“Well I’m not good for much else! What about setting a building on fire?” She jumped up and down, any drama forgotten.

“No.” I sighed and unshouldered my bag. “Get back in the backpack.”

“Not but you see, I’m really good at setting things on fire. I could set a house on fire for you, if you wanted. Or a whole city. A forest?”

“Squeaky toy. In the sack.”

“We get all your enemies on a boat, and I set the boat on fire.”

“I’m not listening anymore.”

“Well you should, these are great ideas.” She turned into a bat before I could argue, and I grabbed the small form and shoved its squeaking face deep into the recesses of my pack.

“No.”


	17. Aw Shit, Here We Go Again

“But the apartment needs to have a window,” Calce complained. She emphasized each word with every rock she could find, kicking it to the curb of the road. Still, she only strayed as far as she dared. Her grin was tampered with the wild eyes that kept glancing back and forth. Still wired, and she should be. We were altogether too close to the forest.

“The apartment may or may not have a window. It depends on how much it’s going to cost. It’s a city, we’d be lucky to get a basement.” We’d be lucky not to be homeless, but that wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

“How am I supposed to fly without a window to crawl out of?”

“What the hell do you think you’re going to do when we get a place?”

“Well if there’s a window I’d assume I’d be flying regularly.” She made flapping motions with her hands. “You have no idea how freeing it is to feel air beneath you.”

“Do you know the meaning of the word low profile?”

“We’re in the middle of a busy city and in the dead of night, a window opens, and someone starts flying a bat-shaped kite that’s black on black in the black night sky. Yes, I can keep a low profile.”

“Really? I’m not sure you can because all you ever do is make the loudest, shrillest possible noises like you’re just aching to get someone’s attention. I swear you really want to be found out. Is it the blood? Is my blood not enough so you’ve invested this countermeasure to bring as many people as possible to the source of the squeaky door noises?”

“You’ve discovered my secret.” She kicked a rock at my heels. “Now you must die.”

“No, really. Why do you squeak so much?”

“I want to talk, but I can’t. So it comes out as little squeaks.” She glanced away with an embarrassed smile. “I was trying to argue with you guys, but you couldn’t exactly understand me.”

“Sorry…” I trailed off, then paused halfway through running a sheepish hand through my hair. “Wait. If you know all you’re going to do is squeak, then why bother trying to talk?” I paused, but she kept walking with a whistle.

“I am just a helpless victim.” She glanced back with a grin. “Unable to share my words with anyone due to the shackles of my form.”

“You’re just trying to be annoying, aren’t you?” I caught up to her easily. She grabbed me by the shoulder and wrenched me down to gently pat my head.

“Shush, it’s alright. Don’t think about it too hard. Just feel sorry for me. That’s it.”

I nudged her back with my shoulder and my cheeks heating faintly. “Yeah. No. I won’t tell you to stop, because it is pretty cute. But also annoying and most likely going to get us found out and killed one of these days. I’m going to have to call the zoo and give them their flying fox back that they never lost.”

“Cute?” I flushed darker and turned away to push my glasses up.

“Well, yeah, I suppose. You do sound a bit like a squeaky toy, but also like a fox, or something. I guess it could be cute.”

“Really? Hey- Andrew.”

“Wait a second.” I held up a hand and searched for the right words. “It’s not that I’ve ever seen a fox before, or heard one. But it’s a little animal, making a high pitched noise. And then you’ve got those little ears swivelling around every which way. Kind of like a windup toy, only its coupled with big black eyes. I wonder why your eyes don’t translate, see that’s another thing I’ve been wanting to ask about, the difference between that form and yours.”

“Andrew.”

“No but then you have that little mouth too and it opens wide just to make a small squeaking noise and your teeth aren’t nearly as terrifying as they are when you’re human so I kind of forget to ever ask anything logical. It’s just cute. Like a pet dog or something. But it’s a bat.”

“Andrew.”

“Not that your teeth aren’t… Bad as they are I mean- I used to think they were terrifying. But now I kind of find myself staring at them a little too long is that weird? I think that’s a bit weird. Your eyes too, I used to think they were scary but now they’re really pr-”

“ANDREW.”

“What?” I’d been talking to my feet the whole time. When I looked up, my head seemed to grow faint. I grabbed Calce’s hand and gripped it as tight as I could.

“We should get going sooner, rather than later,” she muttered. “Maybe, now?”

“I’ll have to find Sarah, if she’s not already been visited.” My voice barely cracked a whisper. “But there’s no where else we could go.”

I stared at the police cars parked outside my parents’ lawn, some with their lights still flashing. The sense of numb dread that had been slowly growing ever since that fateful night suddenly seemed to drive itself to the forefront. These weren’t for any assault. There were too many for that. “We’ve been caught.” I gripped Calce’s hand tighter.

“We could try running, in the more literal sense,” she reasoned in desperation.

“In the middle of the forest, with Jack chasing us? No.”

“Then fight? I could fight them.”

“No. We just… hide. We need to find somewhere to hide. Anywhere but here.”

My parents were just outside. I could see them talking to one of the officers. None of them were smiling. All of them knew. There must have been a witness. Or maybe a tip off from Jack. But something had led them here, and my parents had no witnessing alibi for that night I decided to try doing something different.

We were fucked, just like my second opinion had said.

“Andrew?”

My brain was roiling. “There’s nowhere to go.” It was difficult to breath. Even with Calce beside me, this wasn’t something I could fight. There was no way out of this.

Calce grabbed my arm in the panic and pulled me to the nearest cover. The leaves ripped at my face as she brought me in among a large hedge on the other side of the street that had been carefully manicured by whichever neighbor it belonged to. I hadn’t lived here long enough to make myself acquainted with which old lady owned what house, but the garden gnomes keeping up company told me it certainly belonged to one of them. The large bush kept us hidden but I still felt far too close. It was possible they’d already seen us. Possible I was already going to be taken in. It could have only been a matter of time.

Calce peered over the edge with a glint in her eye. “Are you sure I can’t kill them?”

“No!” I said quickly. “No killing. They haven’t done anything, and that would only make things worse.” I looked around desperately, trying to think. There could be another reason, maybe. I could be overthinking things. All I seemed to do was overthink things.

I took a deep breath and tried to give my nerves a break. Another glance out from behind the bush showed me that there was still time. They hadn’t seen anything, and no one was coming in this direction. We’d been too far down the street for any of them to look this way. I leaned back against the bush and sighed.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

“Better,” I said. Nerves were the enemy. I couldn’t let myself get caught up in a storm like that again.

“You think we should run now?”

“No.”

She blinked in surprise. “Why? Your house is surrounded. If you get arrested, you and I are going to have more than a little problem. I am so not about to be put back in a box. And if they separate us, that isn’t going to be fun either.” She gritted her teeth when an officer started moving. He merely walked to another car, but she wasn’t relaxing. Her entire body was tensed, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. “We could run. Book it through the woods. I’ll stay by you, never leave your side.”

“It looks bad, I’m not going to lie. But maybe we’re not fucked. Maybe this has to do with the assault. A follow-up. We might not need to run.”

“Really?” She gestured incredulously to the crowd. Five police cars, two up against the driveway, another three on the side of the crumbling road carelessly. They must have pulled up not long ago. The perfectly manicured grass had been decimated by the footprints of officers that couldn’t care less. A few of the rough looking officers stayed in their cars with their coms still going. I could hear the static, but not the words. It was all a jumbled mess. The others must have been inside the house. A couple remained, and neither were the older man nor the younger officer I’d seen before. Those who asked me for a statement were either inside, or not a part of the operation. I couldn’t quite see the expressions of the few officers left from here when they weren’t facing me, but the faces my parents had were more than enough. My mother had been crying again. My father looked like he’d swallowed more of my bullshit and he had just about enough of it. He stood with his arms crossed as him and the younger man in uniform gestured and spoke in ways I couldn’t hear nor see clearly. Whatever it was, he didn’t look happy, but that wasn’t anything new. I couldn’t assume anything. I ducked my head back away from the bush, not feeling particularly sated in my apprehension.

“You can at least scope it out, can’t you? If this is what you think it is, then… It’s better to know more than less.” 

“Yeah, I guess. But people are going to notice a bat my size flying around. It would be better to just go.”

“No one ever looks up. If this is them finding out about me being the only survivor, then this is the last I’m ever going to see of this place. The last… The last I’ll ever see of my family.”

“Why would you care what your mother and father think?”

I sighed. “Even if my mom doesn’t understand, and my father is… They’re still my parents. I… I can’t stop loving them. If I don’t get to say goodbye, I at least want to make sure it’s for a good reason. We won’t know until you look and if this is just a follow-up on the assault, I’d be running away for no reason.” My nerves were slipping away again. I was thinking too hard about it. Feeling too much. I needed to be numb. “It wasn’t supposed to be now, right? I still had a few days. I was supposed to have another few days to say goodbye.” It was another pipe dream. I didn’t want to run. It was too soon.

She looked at the scene for a moment longer, then ducked her head back with a hiss. “You put so much stock into your family. More than they deserve.” She grinned faintly at me. “You yourself deserve better, you know.”

“Me? A killer of a hundred people?” I grinned back. A confident smile helped fake a confident attitude. “I’m not sure I do.”

“Nah, you do.” She grinned wider. “You’re not a bad guy.”

“Coming from a demon, that isn’t much of a compliment.”

“Hey. Just because I’m evil incarnate, doesn’t mean that I don’t know what good looks like.” She reached over and pulled me into her arms, squeezing like it was the last thing she’d ever do. I winced at the compression of my shoulder. “And I am never going to get over how I ruined your life with summoning me. It’s my fault you can’t say goodbye.”

“Ruined my life? These have been the most interesting weeks of my life.” I bit my lip when she grinned wider. “Well, maybe it is ruined. But everything before it didn’t even feel real. You, you feel real.” She was so close I could smell the faint scent of blood in her hair again. It was always so fresh. Maybe it was mine. “Been terrible, but interesting.” I winced when she gripped tighter. “My shoulder – careful.”

“Right, right.” She pulled away with a toothy grin. “Sorry. I’ll be right back. Don’t want the police finding you when I’m gone, so stay out of sight.” She changed in front of me within the blink of an eye, and took off with sharp flapping to gain height. She wasn’t entirely black, there were a few tufts of brown here and there. A little fox with wings. But when she had made it a few stories up above me, she appeared as a dark kite against the setting sun. She coasted towards the action trying to emulate a bird of prey, but anyone with a discerning eye would see there was something off about her moments. But I was right. No one was looking up. No one ever bothered to look up when there was work to be done around them. They were just like me, regular people doing regular things. There was no reason to question something or look around. I watched her disappearing form and hoped for the impossible.

She landed on the roof of the house feet away from the edge of the front. I could just manage to see her form slowly claw its way to the front tip of the house, where several below my parents spoke with the officers. She hadn’t landed exactly where she had intended to, and her movements were jilted. A section of the roofing feel from the top and caught in the eaves-trough. I held my breath. Her small size and color made her almost fit in with the speckled roof of the house. She was so far away that I could feel the strange tug of some kind of force wanting to keep us together.

I still couldn’t make out exactly what my father said, but it was clear he was yelling now. It was strange to see him acting so violent towards someone that wasn’t me. He always kept himself in high esteem with his flock, but now he was losing himself. I desperately wanted to know what had himself so upset. Maybe he was angry I destroyed the family name. Or maybe he was upset that someone would dare accuse his son. It was unclear if he was willing to throw me under the bus if I was a lost cause. But then, I might have been overreacting again. It was possible he was just upset I wasn’t there. I wanted to think that. As afraid as I was of him, as angry as I was, in the end I still didn’t want to leave. He hated me, belittled me, never listened. But he was my father. I couldn’t forget that.

I watched a moment longer, when I began something strange. The longer I stared at Calce, the more of those prickles appeared on the back of my neck. It was more of a feeling, of eyes watching me the same way I watched her. I’d always though it was a kind of myth, that you could feel like someone was watching you. But something was off.

She was far away. My eyes widened. She was too far. She would never be able to make it in time. We’d made the same mistake, only this time it was because I was too sentimental. This time it was all my fault because I’d made myself vulnerable in a thirst for knowing something. It had only cost time.

I whirled around, but blinked when I saw nothing. That feeling remained. I was still completely unprotected, even as I crept further from the bush. Perhaps I’d lost my mind. Perhaps I was just afraid. Police right in front of me, but they wouldn’t be able to help. The only one who could was too far away, and I’d never felt more vulnerable. I only wished I’d looked behind me.

An arm gripped my tender shoulder so roughly that white sparked in my head. I choked out a scream, but it was muffled by the other meaty hand that covered my mouth before I could make anything more than a whimper. My eyes moved wildly as desperately kicked out to try and see the man behind me. But it was useless. All I could hear was his heavy breathing and his faint choking laughter as I struggled in a grip that was far too strong for me.

“Well well.” That familiar voice. It liked to rear its ugly head in my dreams sometimes, but here it was again. My eyes narrowed as Jack meandered over to my bush from wherever it is he’d been following me. I’d been so oblivious. I didn’t have Calce’s instincts, I didn’t even have normal human ones and I’d been so busy trying to figure out if I’d lost my home or not that I’d fucked myself over. He had sneaked me and I’d been completely blind to it. I could only blame myself as Jack strolled up to me with the biggest grin in the world, and behind him was even more of an unwelcome surprise.

“Probably wondering how I inherited a lovely gang like this, huh? Great guys, totally my type. Use a little one on one so they know what’s up and who’s truly in charge here. Well, it’s just another one of my endless talents. What can I say? I’m born to rule over people who have little understanding of the world. All humans, for example.” He grinned with his hands in the pockets of his jersey, but he slipped them out to gesture around at the remnants of Peter Michael’s gang. They enclosed themselves around me like sharks. Big, stupid sharks that were in sore need of someone just smart enough to tell them what to do. Add a little fear, a little supernatural flavor, and they’re eyes are darting left and right as they’re desperate to stay in Jack’s good books. I had to hand it to him. Jack might have been a terrible pain in my side, but he was resourceful. I’d let this happen. I’d made the worst combination because of split second decisions.

I kept my eyes on the demon. He stood in front of me with an easy smile, sizing me up with a lingering eye on the shoulder than made me twinge in pain, then leaned in close until he and I were at eye level. “You see, humans know when to bow down to something infinitely stronger than them. It’s in their nature. God, Satan, anything more powerful. And if it’s there in the flesh, then they pick the one most likely to rip them limb from limb. At least, that’s what they should. Right, buddy?” The man behind me wrenched my head down so Jack could pat my hair. “You’re a little messed up with the wiring but I can’t blame you for that. You got a faulty demon, who’s all about asking what they can do for you instead of what you can do for them. Read that contract a little too literally, didn’t seem to get the real rules between the lines. Or maybe she’s just broken. That’s just par for the course for your life, though. I’ve been watching you, getting to know who you are, the shit you go through, and man. All in all you’re pretty pathetic. Can’t say I’m surprised. Always beaten down by dear old dad, guilt tripped by your mom about every little thing. They just love digging their claws in nitpicking every part of your life. Smartest kid in your class and your daddy dearest is still out there yelling that you ain’t got the muscle. Only your sister’s got any kind of respect for you, even that’s minimal at best. When’s the last time you and your older sis had an actual talk? Never even thought to factor her into your plans. Like she don’t exist. I get it, I get it, siblings can be annoying. But you two… Strangers in your own home. Haha.”

He gripped my hair tightly in his fist, his easy smile growing twisted into a grimace. “I could so easily crush you under my heel for what you did to my plans. My army. Everything I’ve been working towards, and I have to go back to square one because of you.” I winced as he tightened his grip further, then let go and turned around with a shrug. Even still, whoever had me in their grip kept a hand firmly digging into where the wound had only just sealed up. I felt lightheaded with the pain.

“But what are you gonna do?” he continued. “That’s life on Earth. Love it, hate it, but chance is a part of everything I do now. Gotta factor chance into everything. Life continues on. Plans go back to the drawing board. I got a new idea, new lease on life, and a new respect for a body that was meant for sports I mean WOW. Sports, am I right? Well I am you’re wrong you and your father are fighting about that constantly but I am a great reason you should reconsider because this body couldn’t have made it out of that party if it wasn’t in shape, you know? No idea how you got out, but I’m guessing that demon probably ran herself thin keeping you safe. What a waste,” he shook his head.

I rolled my eyes and muttered something against the hand.

“Sorry, what was that?” The demon asked. He motioned to the man, and he let go of my mouth.

“Do you ever shut up?” I asked. “All you do is talk. You got an army of idiots here, and I got Calce. She’ll destroy you.” I tried to yell after, but the hand returned with a sharp punch to my shoulder. My yell turned into a muffled whimper as my eyes watered.

“I could shut up, but then you’d live a lot less longer and I’m pretty sure humans like living. Right? Am I right?” He waved a hand around the others, and they nodded numbly with fear in their eyes. He turned back to me with a grin. “Right. Exactly. So shut the fuck up, let me have my fun, and maybe if you’re really nice at the end I’ll only castrate you and feed you your own cock, alright? Won’t even gouge out your eyes. Your demon though, I’ll have a lot more fun with her.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Oh, your demon? You think she can do anything to me? That’s where your wrong – you must hate that, always being wrong. Knowing so much and then boom! You’re in this new world where up is down and demons exist and you’re going to go to hell the moment you die and nothing is ever gonna stop that.” His grin turned upwards as he stared with malicious intent. Deep into my eyes, like a kind of animal. Even the human eyes of Jack couldn’t hide what inhuman thing was just beneath the surface. “Well. Calce is a problem, that’s for certain. A funny little thing about her, she’s not exactly a normal demon. Bit stronger, bit more annoying. But that just means I know ways to make sure she’s not a problem for much longer. You love to think you’re safe and protected as long as she’s at your side. But she’s a demon, friend. Not only a demon but something created as a little passion project that got enough steam down in hell that now even I know how to make sure she ain’t a problem. And human, well that just means anything to do to her, she’ll feel. And suffer. Ah, and here she comes now.” He stood up straight with a wide smile as he took in the setting sun and the kite that was black against the reddening sky. “Looks kinda pretty, don’t it? Soaring back to meet her inferior human master. Look at her go.” He grabbed a stone from the bottom of the bush and tossed it from hand to hand. I tried to muffle another yell, but the digging into my shoulder cut me off again. My vision darkened from the sheer pain emanating from the wound. I could feel the slick wetness under my shirt of the hole opening back up. He’d torn the stitches.

“Funny think about making a human a demon. They tend to have more human characteristics. Especially when the human body they inhabit is still their own. Something that wouldn’t normally do anything to a demon, hurts a hell of a lot more for a Phyreo-custom creation like Calce there. Look at her swoop down. Gorgeous.” She was furious. She had nearly made it. Flying right for Jack, she was nearly there. Nearly-

The stone whipped right between her eyes. He hadn’t thrown it. It had simply left his hand, and landed with a sick snap of skull against stone. Then she was falling down, dropping like a rock until she landed right in front of the damned bush. A kit that someone had cut the strings to.

“Knock him out and grab her.” Jack turned around without so much as a glance in her direction. “I want to make sure neither of them can move when we get started with them.” He glanced around at the dull faces of the men he was ordering, and he erupted in rage. “What are you doing just standing there? Knock him out and grab the bitch!”

“The… The bat, sir?” One asked. “It’s just a bat.”

“And your mother should have swallowed you, now get the bat and follow me before the police catch wind. Come on.”

I had nearly managed to work my teeth to get into a perfect position for biting my captor when the sucker punch landed on my cheek.

.....

I’d never visited my father’s church since moving to Ridgeden, but I’d heard about it. He’d taken an old, outdated church that had been barely used since the old pastor died of a heart attack a few years back, and with the help of donations throughout the town, he’d renovated it to give it a nice, new sheen. The small town was full of the elderly in need of something to care about when their time came. I didn’t blame them for wasting it, if it would give them the solace they needed. But giving money to my father to fuel his plans, well, that I could blame them for.

It was a passion project. He traveled there personally, sometimes for weeks at a time to check out the place and make sure that the renovations were going smoothly. It allowed him to cement himself as the next pastor. Two bird with one stone. By the time he’d gotten here, he was already so well known that there wasn’t a lot of extra assimilation needed. He liked to say he needed to keep a reputation, but being well loved by the local construction companies and by those devout enough already gave him a pretty big head start.

He would talk for hours about the place. The open feeling as you walked through the pews towards the front of church where he stood every Sunday. The tasteful decoration of the crucifix at the very front of the church, and lining the walls in between the large beautiful windows. They let in the light from the east every morning and shone through to illuminate him in the right light. Really made him feel closer to God, whenever he talked with his flock. He always used to say that even if the furniture and decoration didn’t matter, it still helped to put those in need at ease. He didn’t want to go over the top with donations and tarnish the name of the Lord with needless material goods, but he still wanted to honor him.

He was bullshitting himself. This place was still gawdy.

When I finally had the strength to open my eyes, it was through a pounding headache that still threatened to close them again. The first thing I saw was a wooden cross lain into the very floor, between the darker wood. Every part of the flooring had crosses hidden inside, lying and all pointed towards the centerpiece that was the alter. It was difficult to move my head with my entire body feeling like gauze, but I managed to catch a glimpse of the front of the church before I had to close my eyes and drop my head again. On the ground, I think. Ropes holding me hostage, digging into my shoulder just in case I forgot I was crippled. When I found the strength to open my eyes again, I realized the pews had been overturned. Someone had knocked them over hastily. A few were cracked, some with wood scattering out in front of me. The floor had a chill, and the entire room was dark. Echoing with every sound.

My brain was still having a hard time processing sound, but if it was dark, that meant I’d been out for a while. When I blinked, I tried to crane my neck to see what was outside. A full moon, with a faint light shining down on me. It was just enough to see where I was going. The shadows were long in the church, creeping up slowly as the moon rose higher in the sky. An otherwise cloudy night, bringing with it a chill that dug into your bones. My ears popped but even now it felt quiet.

“Calce?” I muttered. My heart leapt when I heard a groan behind me, and the feeling of something nudging up closer.

“Ow,” Calce whimpered.

“Your head too, huh?” I asked. Talking made it worse.

“Everything… Everything hurts.”

“You took a fall,” I smiled faintly. “He got you, remember?”

“It hurts…”

“It’s alright, we’re together now. I don’t know where he is, but he made a mistake putting us together, right?” The sound of her voice instantly put me at ease. We were close, we were together, and if that group ever returned they would understand the mistake they made. I thought Jack was smart, but this was laughable.

“Andrew…”

“What?”

“I… Where are we?”

“A church. My dad’s, actually. I haven’t been here before, but this isn’t nearly as nice as my father always claims it is. There’s-“ I paused. “Crosses, set into the floor.”

She groaned softly.

“Calce?” I asked back with a hint of worry. Every movement just added onto the migraine, but I couldn’t let her be. The crosses were everywhere. “Calce, are you okay?” I tried to move with the ropes, squirming until I could get a better look at her. I fought against the ropes, wincing when they dug into my skin, my shoulder. Far too tight. I could barely breathe, but I craned my neck far enough to see her. My heart dropped.

Smoke billowed out from her as she struggled to breathe. There were crucifixes lain across her body tied in between the rough hempen rope that also kept me struggling. But for her, the crosses burned. Everywhere they touched her, white smoke drifted from the spot. Burns covered her face, her hands, and even burning their way into her clothes. She lay on the floor with her face pressed into the wood. Too weak to move, even for the crosses that burned into her cheek.

“Calce,” I whimpered. Trying to nudge her towards one of the overturned pews was the only thing I could do. My hands were tied with rope, and the crosses were so tightly woven in with her bondage that I couldn’t remove them.

“Fuck this…” She muttered. She was a rag doll as I pushed her out of the way of the wooden flooring. Her legs still brushed one of them, no matter how hard to tried to nudge it away. I looked up at her face that had been torn and burned by the wood. It wasn’t healing. The burns stopped, but they didn’t get better. When she flicked her half-closed and fevered eyes to look at me, they were a sickly pink.

“Calce, I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered. “What’s wrong with you, how do we get out of here?”

“Heh… like I’d fucking know, Summoner.” She coughed, hacking up a dark, smoky stain. “I can’t… Can’t think.”

“Can you burn my ropes? Or yours? You can’t stay like this, you’re going to…” She shook her head.

“No fire. Can’t feel anything. Hollow.” She closed her eyes and tilted back her head against the pew. “Fuck. Hurts. So fucking cold…”

“But there has to be something. You’re strong, you can- something, I don’t know!”

The door creaked open behind us, and a chill went down my spine. I slowly turned.

“Afraid, Andrew?” Jack asked from the edge of the doorway. Figures flanked him on either side, but his grin was unmistakable. It shone white in the moonlight’s reflection. His jersey logo too. “You should be. I believe it’s check and mate, right? Well, whatever. You’re still fucked.”


	18. I Have Decided I am a Christian Now

“What have you done to Calce?” I snarled. My bindings were tight enough that I could do no more than struggle. But I wanted my fist around his slimy neck. His eyes reflected the light too. Metallic whites that shone too brightly, he stepped into the gloom of the church. He was careful to step on the luxurious rug that lined the middle of the pews, moving only where the crosses weren’t. The rest of the carpet had been pulled away from Calce and I. Both of us were trapped in the middle of the church with crosses placed so frequently you couldn’t move without touching one etched into the floor. Jack’s grin slowly widened as he moved carefully, like an animal stalking towards us. The others behind didn’t seem to notice. On one side of his group a hulking man in his early twenties with a lazy eye and familiar meaty hands clutched a collection of crude crucifixes tightly in his grasp. His one good eye darted between Jack and Calce. The other in front was spindly, a younger kid maybe as old as me, with a book at his side. I squinted, and could barely make out the silver of the cross in the dim light. A bible.

Others followed Jack as he entered the church with his arms outstretched like a man himself on a cross. I thought I could recognize some of the cohort in the darkness, but I couldn’t be sure. Really, I didn’t want to know. They weren’t friends. “What do you think Andy? Good? Bad? Poetic? I think it’s poetic myself, I mean your dear old dad’s church that he worked painstakingly on to make it the shining pride of Ridgeden? Now his son’s going to die in it and he’ll get to discover the body. Yeah, definitely poetic. Oh and I think I’m gonna call you Andy from now on okay? It’s way better than a boring old Andrew don’t you think? Andrew, now that’s an old man’s name. But Andy. Better. Your mom had the right idea. Andy is a heroic name, Andrew’s the name of the cashier ringing out your groceries.”

“Shut up and tell me!” I broke in. He paused, and his smile twitched into a frown for just a moment. Only just.

“Why are you harshing my fun, Andy? Look around. We’re in a church. Demons and religion have never mixed well. There’s a lack of power that you can’t understand with consecrated ground. Something holding us at bay, begging us to leave this world alone. We’re not all God’s children under this roof now, and she and I aren’t welcome.” He pointed at her with a grin. “Her, now she’s a bastardization of His perfect work don’t you see?” He was going off on a tangent again. God, I wanted to wring his stupid neck. “All that human free will he gave, all of that mortality in order to see him at the end of her life if she’d only seek redemption. And it’s stripped away. Broken inside until the only thing left is a burning source of fire and brimstone begging for violence and death. That free will’s been put to a new, way more interesting use. A pretty nice piece of work if I do say so myself. Human, but not and yet infinitely more. Makes it pretty hard to wear her down, you know? You gotta know what makes ‘em tick. And I know what makes ‘em tick.” I looked at Calce with growing worry. Her eyes were closed again, her breathing faint as her head lolled against her front. The wounds smoked and coiled in a white fog, drifting slowly up to the ceiling.

“And what makes them tick?” I said through clenched teeth.

“Fire. Fill a human with enough of the fires of hell, and they change. That’s what her master discovered. And what happens when you add water to fire? Did you notice the puddle?” I blinked as I felt something cool and wet begin to seep into my jeans. “Got a few super soakers and let some of my friends here go to town. She didn’t even wake up to scream and by the time she was conscious, well. There goes that flame.” Calce coughed again. The water had turned to steam long ago but the effect had remained. Water was more than enough to break her. Something as simple as water, holy or not.

“Calce…”

“Gone out like a light. All that’s left is the bare bones of what made her human. And that, that’s a burned out shell now isn’t it? Make sure she’s tied up and covered in depictions of the God everyone loves so much, and she won’t be able to move an inch. That’s what I did to your precious little familiar, Andy. I broke her down because I know what makes her tick. You never got that from her, that information you so desperately crave. But me? I got it all.” He laughed and twirled around towards us, kicking up his legs before grabbing the spindly boy beside him and pulling him in for the strongest of hugs. “Isn’t this great? I’ve always wanted an evil villain speech and I’m finally living out the dream! I got minions – well, not the minions I wanted but still! Minions! And I even got a few heroes to destroy!” He pulled away from the boy to give a sidelong glance at me. “Well not heroes exactly. But dissenters. I’ll be a dictator.” His eyes widened, jumping away with his hands in the air. “A dictator! A totalitarian governor over everything! Oh, it’ll be great!”

I couldn’t get her away from the water on the puddle, but that didn’t seem to matter. No matter how hard I shook her, she could barely react.

“Stop,” she groaned after a while. “You’re just makin’ it hurt more.”

“But you can’t do this right now,” I insisted. “You have to find something in there. Fire, anything. What about my blood, will the blood do it?” I tried to move my wrist towards her, but she tilted her head away.

“Ain’t gonna do shit. There’s nothing to burn the blood. I’m a machine out of spark, Summoner.” She tilted her head down her front. “Can’t… I can’t even move.”

“Hey can you both can it please? I’m trying to do this speech here. I had it prepared – nearly made cue cards but I only had so much time. Plus! It’s pertinent to your situation.” He cracked his fingers with gleaming eyes. “See you can still get out of this, if you want.”

“Was me destroying everything you worked towards not enough of a clue?” I glared at him in disbelief. “I burned your book. Killed all the people you would have made into your slaves. Killed every one of your worshipers in a fiery explosion. Would have killed you too. And-”

“Hey Andy I love you and everything but can you shut the fuck up for a second?” He waved a hand dismissively at me. “Not the four-eyes, no. I’m here to talk to the real powerhouse in the room.” He trotted over to Calce until he was at the edge of the carpet, then sat on one of the overturned pews and crossed his legs. His smile faded. “Let’s talk for a second here, demon girl. Man to man. Woman to demon. Whatever to whatever. You alive?”

“And kicking,” She grumbled with her eyes stilled closed. “If you try to touch me or Andrew. Swear I’ll murder that body and rip you out myself. Then I’ll burn every fibre of your existence away to nothing.”

“Big words for someone barely speaking at more than a whisper.” He tilted his head to the side. “But I don’t have to be your enemy here, you know. I know about your master, Phyreo. I know about your life, all you’ve been through, all your capable of.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“I was given knowledge to help Jack, but it’s more than enough for me. I have the Devil’s wisdom, Calce.” His voice’s pitch went uncannily low for a moment. The hairs on my arms stood up. “You’re so much stronger than this little freak is worthy of. In fact, I’d say no one is worthy of you. You were one of the Fighters, Calce. You’re too strong for any human to match you. You were in a class all your own, living it up on Earth in a way that demons can only dream of. And now you’re here. How the mighty have fallen. Letting yourself take orders from a shrimp of a human with less than stellar vision and an unhealthy obsession with school. You could kill him and run. But you don’t. We end up here because a nothing like him is worth dying for. Why?”

“Fuck off.” She tried to smirk. I gritted my teeth.

“See, this is the thing that gets me. All of this power, all of this strength, and you only show off just enough to keep you and your Summoner safe. You don’t even try to do more than you have to. What, are you afraid of him, what he’ll think of you? Are you afraid that he’ll hate what you’re capable of becoming? Are you so worried about what your dear Summoner might think, that you keep your strength in the dark? You can’t have told him, if you’re still like this.”

“What’s he talking about?” I glanced at Calce, but her eyes remained closed as she slowly shook her head.”

“But I know what you’re capable of,” Jack continued.

“Fuck off, “you know,”” she growled.

“I know you’re a sun on legs. A little water might bring you down, maybe, and a few crosses here and there. But that ain’t gonna kill you. See, there’s no point in killing you because you’re an immortal being. The only thing I can do, really, is send you back to hell. But I don’t wanna do that because you’re one of the most surprising and valuable assets I’ve ever come across. You’re worth something, Calce. Andy here, he’s wasted potential, not to mention a human. But you and I both know about the thousands of deaths at your hands. The experience you’ve had, evolving with the rest of the world. Growing to be as evil as humanity is capable of becoming. You would come back to that. You could continue, and this time you wouldn’t be a passive passenger. You’d mold it however you want. Kill whoever you wanted to kill. No master.” He gestured to himself. “Just… A partner.”

“Sounds like you think you’ve already got me,” she muttered.

“Maybe if you hear me out, I will. Calce, listen. You and me. Bonnie and Clyde. Yin and Yang. Screw the middle man. I’ll kill Andrew for you and make you a demon all your own again. Then you’ll have the freedom to do whatever you please. Wanna find your old friends? I can give you a head start. You could rekindle friendships. Romance.” His grin grew into a dark, inhuman size. “She’s closer than you think. So is he.”

Calce opened her eyes to stare him down.

“All I ask is a favor, in return,” he continued. “Help me rule this town – no. Help me rule this entire eastern seaboard. Help me break down every political power, and render the world in our image. Together. Let humans know that demons exist, and let them fear us. With the kind of power you hold, we’d be able to destroy everything. You’re not smart, hell knows you’re not smart, but I got that covered.” He pointed at himself. “I can be the brains, you can be the brawn, and together we’ll be completely unstoppable. Your little human toy over there will be nothing but a memory. I don’t know what it is with you and him, why it is you seem to care, but I know the real Calce. I’ve heard the stories. I know what you’re made of. What you’re capable of. And this ain’t it.”

Calce stared at him for a moment longer, then closed her eyes. Then she yawned.

“He sure does talk a lot, doesn’t he, Summoner?”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s making me want to die already. Does he actually have a point to make, or does he really just love the sound of his own voice?"

“Little of column A, little of column B. Maybe a point on the top of his head.”

“More A than B, I think. He’s waving his arms about enough that I think he just wants an interpretive dance break.”

“Nah, not that. That would make this halfway interesting.”

“Hey!” Jack stood up with a snarl. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“I heard,” Calce blinked at him tiredly. “You know where Shift and Rowan are and if I join the arts and crafts club I’ll be able to come for the campfire cookouts. Cool. Really great. Sounds nice. Fuck you.”

“What does this human do that makes himself matter to you!” Jack howled.

“He doesn’t leave me behind.”

My heart fluttered. “Calce-” I began, but Jack broke in again.

“Really? That’s what’s going to make you throw your life and his away? That’s what you’re going to do? I could have pardoned him, you know. Could have let you keep him as a toy if you’d only do what I asked.”

“Sure you would,” Calce drawled.

“But no. Now you’re making me overextend my kindness to the point that I don’t think my selflessness can help you anymore. I try to be a good person to demons, you know.” He put his hand over his heart and choked back a fake sob. “I try to care about my fellow monstrosity. The world is full of the harsh cruel reality that somehow, some way, God’s creatures inherited the Earth and we god nada. Zilch. Nothing. We have to claw our way up from the very pits of hell just to live here. And now I want to take over the world. You should be joining me. We should be unifying. We should be friends.”

“If you close your eyes and let your mind wander, he kind of sounds like the ocean,” Calce grinned. “Like waves of white noise crashing around your ears. Leaving literally no impact on me whatsoever.”

“We’re demons!”

“Oh cry me a river, fuckface. You’re a little poltergeist who got too big for his britches.”

That fury in his eyes made it impossible to contain my chuckling. “Well if that’s the way you see it, fine. Since you seem to be so focused on this little twerp, let me show you what you’re playing for. Jeb?”

A sharp pain erupted as the kick collided with my back. I gasped in pain and tried to see what had caused it. A large figure loomed over me. The lazy eyed man, a wooden cross in his hand. It was sharpened to a sickening point looming over my head. I held my breath. His mouth was set in a grim smile.

“Why don’t I just kill him outright?” Jack called over. “Then you’d have nothing to care about anymore. It’d be doing you a service. What would you do then, Calce, run away? Have your own fun in a far-off country playing with war and ignoring the rest of the world like you always do? How was it playing for the Axis, did you get enough blood out of it? Enough violence and sacrifice? I could give you more. Calce, hun, I could give you everything.” The man with the lazy eye drew back and gave another good kick to my chest. I went coughing to the ground as my lungs lurched inside, my face shoved against another inlaid wooden cross. Jack erupted into laughter as the man continued to punch and kick everywhere he could. He moved to my back, stomping and kicking near the tailbone and sending a few good ones right between my shoulder blades. Every blow made my mind dizzier. Dimly, I could hear Calce’s voice. Hoarse and angry, but I couldn’t understand hear just what it was. I felt my consciousness dimming as one of the blows collided with my jaw. My glasses went skidding to the side.

“Stop.” I could hear Jack’s voice yell. With only a glimmer of light to my vision, the assault was over. That dull groaning noise must have been me, but it felt so far away. Everything was pain. If it weren’t for the ropes, I’d be curling up and weeping.

“So go ahead,” I heard Calce spit. “Do it.”

“When I said you were a broken demon, Calce, I didn’t meant that you were quite this bad. Are you trying to one up me with your self sacrifice?”

“Quit the talking and put your money where your mouth is. I’ll never join you and you know it.”

“You’re delaying the inevitable, you know. I’ll just kill him after. But then you’ll both die. You can only choose to save yourself.” I tried to focus my vision on Jack, but it was too blurry. I had no idea where my glasses had gone. I turned to look for Calce and found a dark blob on the ground, leaning against a larger mass.

With dull, aching pain, I slowly inched my way over to her again. “Calce, what…”

“Shush, Summoner,” she murmured. “It’s going to be alright.”

“No…” I moved closer to her, until I found myself nudging her side. “Whatever you’re doing, stop.”

“Look at this,” Jack laughed. “Like little inchworms. Guess there’s no point in reasoning with bugs. As strong as you are, Calce, you never fail to disappoint with your smarts. Your demon made it clear she’d be nothing but a hindrance with my plans, Andy. It’s kind of a bummer. I was really looking forward to the mayhem she could cause, fire and flames and everyone begging for mercy and getting none. But since I can’t have someone ruining everything I’ve strived towards again, I’ve elected to make sure she’s not a problem.” He sighed. “Such a shame to have yet more wasted potential.”

“What?” I peered up at Calce desperately. “What is he talking about?” She couldn’t die. She said she was immortal.

“Exorcism,” he said gleefully.

“You… You idiot,” I turned to him with fear slowly growing up my spine. “No one here can preform something like that, and you’d just take yourself with you.”

“Andy. Andy, old buddy, old pal, good friend o’ mine. Best boy in the world. You’re a fucking moron.” I gritted my teeth. “You see,” he continued, then paused. “Oh, now I really like that. Love making people see. Especially with a captive audience.” He trailed off, then laughed. “I don’t need a priest. I don’t even need a holy man. I only need a good old-fashioned Latin bible, and someone with half decent pronunciation. As for me, well…” He held up something in his hands and waved it around. “Guess you can’t see. But earplugs are a wonderful invention. What I can’t hear, can’t kill me. Words wash right over me like water off a ducks’ back. You’re the moron who never thought to try it.”

“It… It can’t be that easy.”

“Oh but it is. You were never dealt the right hand in the first place. Something so strong, and yet so stupid. Stupid enough that she never thought to use her full power to protect you.” The outline of Jack leaned forward on his seat. “Before I send you back to prison to rot for the rest of your miserable existence Calce, riddle me this. Why is it you never thought to protect Andrew with everything you had? All it would take is a killing blow to you, and suddenly you’re unstoppable. But you stick with this pitiful form.”

“Shut up,” she muttered.

“No, really, I wanna know. All I can do is guess. But I want to hear it from your mouth. Why are you so hesitant to show him your true form?” The question hung in the air. I bit my lip, my head still aching pressed against the ground. I tried to focus in on Calce, but even as close as she was, I couldn’t make her out. I had no idea what she was feeling.

“Calce,” I nudged against her side. “Calce you don’t have to tell him anything.”

“I’m afraid,” She whispered. I froze in place.

“What was that?” Jack leaned in closer with a laugh in his voice. “Loud and clear for the audience, please.”

“I’m afraid!” She yelled with all she had, the weakness cracking in her voice. “I’m afraid because I’m a monster and humans are always afraid of monsters. I can’t show him my true form. Andrew, I… I had to protect you. I always have to protect you. If you knew what I was capable of... I can’t show you that side of me. You’d never see me the same way again. You’re already afraid of my teeth, my strength, my eyes. You’re afraid of me. And I’d never be able to keep you around, if you knew what I could become.” She held back a whimper. “You’d break down and I wouldn’t be able to fix that.”

“Calce…” I pressed my face against her side, wriggling up with a wince as I made it to her ear. Her breath was so fast, so shallow. I nuzzled her cheek, then whispered softly in her ear in the movement of the touch. 

“The lazy eyed man has a wooden stake. Make him mad. That’s an order.”

In the din, she turned her face to me. Those blurry pink eyes widened.

“An order,” I muttered, and pressed my face into her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said louder. “I’m sorry you think I’d be afraid of you.”

“It’s a wonder you two haven’t tried anything with each other yet, when you’re all over each other like that,” Jack gagged. “I can’t believe you’ve been brought so low. But I guess your little boy toys’ a bit of a sissy to make a move, isn’t he? Even Jack here was never great with the ladies. Didn’t have the face for it. Pity. It’d be way more fun to break a few hearts. Pull them apart and salt the new world with a little broken up puppy love.” He looked thoughtfully at us, then snapped his fingers. “Hey, Lou. Give him his glasses. I want him to see when Calce is dragged back to the pits of hell. Put the fear of God in him before I tear out his still beating heart.”

The smaller figure stepped towards me and roughly pushed my glasses back on. I looked up at the spindly boy. The bible was held tightly in his hand as he looked fearfully back. His hands were shaking. That’s why he’d poked me in the eye before he’d actually gotten the things on. I couldn’t find it within myself to hate a coward that was only trying to survive.

“Alright, go ahead. Page… What is it…” Jack rolled his eyes and popped the earbuds in then lolled back on the overturned pew. “Whatever it’s marked go ahead. Put whatever minimal Latin skills you got to the test and I’ll just make sure I can’t hear a fucking thing. Make it quick. This place is setting my teeth on edge. I hate it here.” The boy stood back with a cough and thumbed through the book. The seconds ticked by, and I watched Calce with growing apprehension. She was shivering from the cold, but for a second I thought I saw a glimpse of spark in her eyes.

“Hey, lazy eye.” She spat in the man’s direction.

“The fuck did you just say to me?” The man spoke in a jumbled speech of too many broken teeth.

“Oh sorry, I misspoke. I meant to say Neanderthal.”

“The fuck is a Neanderthal?”

“Your mom.”

“What are you, a kid?”

“What are you, a fucking gorilla?” He growled, waving his massive hand dismissively.

“Fuck you, monster.” 

She wasn’t doing enough. Every breath she took was hard. She wouldn’t be able to think under that pain.

The first words of horribly mangled Latin rose up in the church as the boy found the page. Calce flinched away from me, gasping in pain as she fell on another cross. The smoke and steam rose up from her body again.

“Hey, Lazy eye.” She gasped. As the Latin continued, her body seemed to contort against her will. It melded with the acoustics of the church and seemed to be everywhere at once, ringing in my ears. “You know a demon never forgets, right?”

“Shut up,” he growled. He almost made a motion to kick her, but her eyes connected with his at the last second, and his foot stopped. Jack guffawed from his perch as he watched the show. “You’re annoying. You should shut up.”

“I’m no human girl.”

“Yeah. I know you’re a fucking monster.” He spat down at her. “Momma didn’t raise no heathen.”

“And a monster never forgets who trapped it,” she continued. Her teeth glinted in the moonlight as she smirked. “Jack said I was stronger, didn’t-” she gasped again, smoke drifting away from her as a dark red circle slowly began to form around her. The Latin was growing louder. It was jumbled and weak, but it was enough. My fingernails dug into my palm. “Didn’t he?”

“So?”

“So if your leader is afraid of me, do you really think that this is gonna stop me? Some little magic trick?”

“I don’t understand it – shut up! Fuck off and die!” He huffed for good measure, as if expecting that would shut her up.

“Not going to.” She grinned. “I’ll come back. And I’ll kill you. And your…” She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Your mother. Dear old mom.”

“You… You dunno what you’re talking about with my momma.”

“She’s older now, isn’t she? Difficult for her to do the harder things in life.”

“Shut up!”

“She must need your help, and she only knows you as a good boy. Doing odd jobs around the house? She can’t lift the things you can.”

“Stop it!” This time he connected with her side. The kick made her cringe, but it was nothing compared to the agony of the words. The words had her shaking, eyes straining out of her skull as the red circle grew slowly in strength. The wavering Latin made the circle falter constantly. It was terrible enough that it might just buy us time. But I couldn’t do anything now. I could only watch, slowly inching away as Jeb’s violence pushed her away from me. Jack’s laughter was almost drowned out by the Latin, but I could still hear the sneer in his voice.

“But you see, Jack even said I had friends. And friends can bring me back.” She grinned widely up at him with her teeth still gritted in pain. “So I’ll find you again, lazy eye. I’ll find you, and I’ll let you live. Wanna know why?”

“No… Shut it or I’ll kick you again!”

“Because I want you to be alive so you can watch as I make a cut into your mother’s tummy, just above the womb where she made you. I’ll slowly remove your mother’s entire digestive system from her stomach, foot by foot, still alive. Then I’ll string it up around the room, and force you to watch as your mother mouths that she loves you one last time. She’ll say it to make you feel better of course, but what she’ll really be thinking in those dying moments as her body succumbs to the shock of the pain, is why? Why did my son let a monster like this escape?” His constant kicks didn’t stop her talking now. Nothing could compare to the Latin words. He kept shouting for her to stop. His lazy eye lolled to the side, but his good one was full of tears. Dark, clawing hands were grabbing at her face, trying desperately to pull her down towards the pit that was opening up beneath her. My stomach lurched. Too late. We were going to be too late. “I’ll get revenge, that’s going to happen. And it’s all because your little Jacky is too afraid to do the job himself. He’s afraid to kill me, because he knows he ain’t strong enough. And neither are you.” He stomped on her face, but that didn’t stop her coughing laughter.

Jack was laughing beyond this, his eyes wide in fascination as he watched Calce struggle in pain with gasping breaths. “Man, shoulda brought popcorn!” He was drowned out by the next verse of the unintelligible language.

“I’m strong enough!” He bellowed, kicking her chest and stomping down on her stomach with wild, shaking blows. “Y-you’re a liar!”

“I’ll feed you pieces,” she grunted. A childlike hand shot over her check and grabbed on with little claws. “Little bits that wouldn’t kill her. Blood tastes amazing, we should share it together. She’ll watch as you get to relish the choicest cuts of her own flesh. I’ll make sure she watches as she nurtures you for the last time.” She coughed up a few drops of blood herself as the man’s fist collided with her jaw.

With mad fury glinting in his eyes, he gripped one of the wooden stakes in his hand. “You’re not hurting my momma. I ain’t a heathen!” He choked back a sob. “I ain’t gonna end up in this! I’ll kill you. I swear I will.”

Lou stopped chanting with bleary confusion as Jack jumped out of his seat. “Hey, hey Jeb my buddy. What are you doing? What’s with the stake? I thought you were just tenderizing the meat a little, friend- haha good job but hey, you can stop now. Put it down.”

“She ain’t gonna kill my momma!” Jeb looked back at Jack with tears in his eyes, his hand gripping the wooden stake in a vice. “She’s not going to kill nobody anymore!”

“What? I can’t hear you – fuck these earplugs – Jeb put down the fucking stake!”

Jeb hesitated.

“Number one son, right?” Calce coughed up another splat of blood. “I’ll make sure I let her know who condemned her.”

With a roar, Jeb drove the wooden stake inside Calce’s chest. He might have been the most unintelligent person I’d ever met, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was going between the ribs to find the heart.

The flickering lights of hell vanished in a whiff of brimstone smoke as the light in Calce’s eyes faded. I kept telling myself it would be okay. That there was something more, something stronger inside her. But all I could see was the person I cared about lying on the ground with a pool of blood slowly growing beneath her. Jeb stood back up and wiped the tears from his eyes, standing still long enough for Jack to throw him to the ground in a rage. He walked over her body without a second thought.

“What was that? What the fuck did I say, did I ever say hey, you should kill the demon? Did I ever say that was a good idea? No! I said you listen to me and me alone! No small-town gangster wannabe, no corrupt cop, but me. ME! I’m your ruler and you’re just going to do this shit? Did you forget what I said I could do to you?!”

“She was gonna hurt my momma!” Jeb whimpered as he tried to rise to his feet, but Jack swept his legs out from under him.

“I did NOT say you could get up! You stay down! I’m the leader here, me! I’m the big kahuna, I’m the boss that they failed to defeat and you’re here stealing my thunder, disobeying my orders and- and…” He turned back to look at Calce’s body, and an expression of pure horror grew. “And you just killed her,” he trailed off.

“I don’t understand!” Jeb sobbed. “She’s a bad egg!”

“You… You stupid human.” Jeb laughed faintly as he smiled with his eyes full of terror. “You stupid, damaged, abortion of a human. You killed her.”

“What do you mean?” Lou piped up. His hands stills hook as he held onto the open bible. “Should… Should I keep going? I don’t understand!” Others in the room began to shift uncomfortable and echoed the sentiment. There was a tension in the air. All of them could feel, the smell of something wrong. The metallic tang from the blood, the brimstone still dissipating from the hell hole. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I looked at her body.

“Come on…” I murmured, half hidden behind a pew as far, as my struggling could get me. “Come on. Do something. Get up.” A killing blow. That’s all we needed. A killing blow.

“Fuck this!” Jack snarled. “Fuck all of this. I’m finished with it.” He lunged towards the door with wild eyes but tripped on the carpet and went sprawling. “Fuck!” He screamed. “Fuck! Run, you idiots, run!” He scrambled back to his feet as he screamed in the eerily silent church, but he didn’t make it before the world erupted into flame.


	19. Those Crazy Kids

A gout of fire stretching many feet into the air tore through the entirety of the church, ripping apart curtains and lapping up to the center of the altar where the face of Jesus Christ lay watching with a blanket stare. The heat singed my face and licked at my skin as I tried to duck further behind the pew, but no one was safe from the sheer torrent that ravaged the building. There were screams of people caught in the flames, plumes of fire exploding from them as they scattered like mice in the wind. Those familiar agonizing cries that had set my teeth on edge the last time I’d heard them were now almost music to my ears. I opened my eyes just enough to see the flames licking at scurrying bodies too entrapped in the magnitude of the fire to have any hope of escaping. Their limbs were covered in flickering orange as they struggled towards the door while patting out the fire. Some were smart enough to drop and roll but others just kept running. The few that ended up on the floor struggling to quench the fire were the ones that barely survived. But their faces and arms were charred. The ones that never bothered dropped like flies only feet away from the exit. Others near the back had been safer, but in between them and a way out was a wall of fire that stretched nearly to the ceiling of the arched building. The fire wavered and centered itself as it seemed to find its structure. It was a massive gout extending from a body. A body that slowly moved in a lilted, awkward movement as it rose from its position. The ropes that contained her had been turned to ash, along with the crosses that had burned into her skin. 

Her form was crouched, her hands at her sides as the fire exploded from every facet of her being. Her hair and clothes whipped around her with all the force of a hurricane, tousled by the force of the flames. They didn’t burn, but everything else around her did. The floors cracked and spit as the lacquer burned away and the wooden décor peeled to nothing. The flames rose up, and coalesced around a growing strange rippling image down her back. Something behind her was growing, stretching out in the fire to become impossibly large. The ripples of change at the front of her head grew with them, extended out as she waited for the form to complete. Along with it was a spark of flame flicking behind her, fanning the fire and changing it as the shade of a tail began to grow into focus. With every breath she took, the flames only seemed to grow stronger and the… The wings behind her… They stabilized into a corporeal entity. Blood red wings pronged with sharp boney spikes rose up above her and stretched to their full capacity. Their size shadowed half the church in an eerie glow. Then, the demon stood as the flames finally died down to a few isolated embers. But the scorch marks that stretched from wall to wall in the flooring of the church remained. The face of Jeb stared straight ahead. He matched the color of the flooring. Half of him had already turned to black dust, but that horrified expression remained. Lou had curled up on his side as the flames took him. His face was obscured by the charred arms that tried uselessly to keep the fire at bay. The men closest to her body were now nothing but blackened corpses, frozen in faces of pure horror at something they hadn’t lived long enough to fully witness. The few that were left cowered back like cattle with dull, afraid eyes that couldn’t make sense of the thing in front of them. And Jack, Jack was staring up at Calce, merely feet away from the zone that would have killed him.

“No…” He heaved. “No! It’s not fair!”

The demon hissed as she fell from her crouch onto her hands and knees. Her eyes were nothing but red. Red, and lacking that slitted pupil. She sniffed at the air around her as if experiencing it for the first time. Another breath, and she took in the scent of the brimstone remnants, the burning flesh, and the fear of humanity. Behind her the massive bat-like wings flapped a few times, stretching nearly to the walls of the church before folding their newly formed selves against her back. The horns protruding from her head were like a bull’s, an off white tinted with yellow and sickeningly sharp. Claw slowly moved over claw as she tested her ability to move. It was tentative, unfamiliar. Her wickedly long pronged tail moved back and forth like a cat’s and slicked between her legs like it had a mind of its own. It held onto the individual pews as she got her bearings. Even I could feel it in the air. The power radiating off of her. Something completely inhuman, and stronger than anything any of us could wrap our heads around. With every breath, fire expunged itself from her nose and body. It flickered gently where her wounds had once been. All along her body, the thin tendrils of fire danced and faded with every unsteady step in the direction of the fearful men. My hair stood on edge as I stared at what had become of Calce. She was this monster. This was who she truly was.

I stared at her form and waited for the fear to settle in. With that power and that tingling, I knew it should have. I was wired. Everyone else was scared. Everyone else saw her and saw something unknowable. Something beyond human understanding. Something that couldn’t exist. She was beyond humanity.

But my heart didn’t race because of fear.

“It’s not fair!” Jack screamed at Calce. “It’s not fa-”

Her nostrils flared. The demon opened her mouth, and brought forth an otherworldly, ear-splitting scream. I gritted my teeth and ducked back behind the pew, but with my arms still bound I couldn’t help but hear it. It pierced my ears like a hot knife. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t hear anything but that berserker cry that seemed to reach to your very soul. When it was over, I peaked my head up and tried to ignore the ringing in my ears.

She was gone. In an instant, she’d moved from one end of the church to the other where the cowering survivors lay helpless. The screams of the men grew sharp as they tried to scatter, but she grabbed one of the few who were too terrified to run. One side of his head had been burned by the fire, but he still struggled briefly to get away. It made the aim for his throat turn into a bit to his stomach as she dug her teeth right into the belly of the man. Her jaws unhinged as she struggled to bite down with such fat in the way but when she pulled back, his screams turned shrill and agonizing as she ripped several chunks of the flesh from the unprotected stomach. Clothes tore with it. Stomach acid poured from the wound as his screams began to die and his struggling changed to little more than death spasms. With a disgusted snort, she turned to his throat instead. Her fangs easily ripped out a chunk of the man’s neck, and she swallowed. She left the corpse with its mouth still open in a silent scream. His stomach acid slowly joined the pool of blood on the floor, seeping between the singed floorboards. My eyes watered at the smell. I almost gagged at first, seeing his body lying there, but when I turned to see her again, it seemed to fade into the background.

Without pause, she leapt at the next in smooth motion. My stomach was still churning but I couldn’t look away. My eyes were glued to her.

It only took a single punch into the body of the running man to hear the crunch of bone, coupled with a sharp gasp as he tried to register that his back had just been broken. But she didn’t stop there. She dug her fist in, her claws digging through the skin, twisting and churning the viscera as she sought out her prize. The man’s throat screams for mercy were drowned out by the bubbling and slick snapping of his own muscle tissue being ripped apart by an inhumanly strong claw. The sickening churning of gore accompanied a proud howl as she ripped out his still beating heart, then threw it on the ground with the crumpling body. The eyes of the man had almost left their sockets as they widened and then dulled from the shock of having his own heart ripped from his back. The whimpers had turned into screams again as the victims found their voices and fully realized the danger they were in, but they went unheard. They echoed all around me from where I hid. Where I cowered. I couldn’t do anything but watch. I couldn’t stop her, and I didn’t want to.

Her massacre only continued as those sightless eyes locked onto a target desperately trying to pull at the church doors that had been melted shut. A few of them had begun to crowd around the doors, pushing at each other and screaming in shock as they all began to realize one by one that the metal locks on the church doors had been sealed shut by her fire. They were trapped in the building with a monster. I didn’t blink and miss her gait this time, but it was still breathtakingly fast. She ran on four limbs like an animal and lunged with another screech towards the one that was desperately pulling at a door knob that wouldn’t turn. She went straight for the head, jumping onto his back and sinking her claws and unhinged jaws into the scalp of the screaming man as she twisted and turned to get at the skull underneath.

“HELP ME!” He half sobbed and half squealed to the others around him. “Please GOD help me!” His voice was haunting my ears. I kept my gaze on them all the same, no wanting to risk looking away and being afraid again. But the others scattered again with yells of dismay and fear. They all left the man to his macabre fate as Calce ripped at the scalp, then at the skull itself of the man who could no longer stand on his two feet. He went down with a muffled scream, the front of his head colliding with the doors of the church. His hands ripped and clawed back at her body but she treated it as little more than a bug buzzing by her ear. Calce chewed at the bony white of his skull with her fingernails painstakingly pulling apart the sealed creases of bone until she finally ripped open to find what she was seeking. Coils and globs of grey matter streaked from her claws and teeth as she dug into his brain with vigor. Ripping and tugging, she spat out the slick grey entrails of the man that could only faintly groan as his life was slowly ripped away from him, before slamming his head repeatedly into the floor of the church until there was nothing more than the splats of gore and bone. His arms went limp, and Calce broke away from the body as she spit out the last of his brain matter. My stomach was heaving again.

She stopped for only a moment before turning on the rest of the frightened crowd with a maw stained with metallic red and white.

“Calce.” My breath caught in my throat. That could have been me. No matter how many times I saw her break a human down into nothing but muscle and flesh, no matter how many times I hear their screams get cut off by the sound of limbs being torn asunder, I couldn’t look away. I wanted to be afraid. I kept waiting to be afraid.

She broke the neck of another one of Jack’s henchman with almost lazy handiwork, then tore the entire head off and threw it at her next victim with a screech before she lunged once more. This one she aimed for the gut. The hefty man was begging for his life as she disembowelled the would-be gang member, crying as he saw his own organs being pulled like streamers from his body. They landed in heavy wet and steaming heaps as she dug around for whatever would kill him. The blood drained from his face but even then, he still kept chanting weakly for help, for mercy, for anything that would end his miserable nightmare. It took her fishing up into his ribcage to finally let him fall back into nothingness with a whimper. She tore the heart out and bit off a hunk of the dark organ before loping off towards the next target.

No matter how much they screamed, begged for mercy, or cried for their mothers, she only chewed, bit, tore, and swallowed. Another tried to fight back. They were obliterated. The next raised a wooden cross with his eyes full of futile determination, but before he could do more than hold it up, she had grabbed his arm and was tearing it out of its socket. The harsh rip of skin tearing from itself out of sheer strength added to the terrified mayhem and screaming. It landed only a foot in front of me. The hand was still twitching, still gripping that cross in a vice like it could still do what it had intended to. The blood from the torn veins leaked in another puddle down the burned in lines of the flooring. The metallic scent of blood was overwhelming, not just near me, but everywhere. I heard the crunch of the man’s back breaking. She’d thrown him in the opposite direction, and he’d left a dent in the side of the church. He was still alive as he fell to the ground with a pained groan. At the noise, she pounced again to silence him. His whimpers turned to gurgles of blood as she feasted on the human flesh.

I should have been afraid. With every tear and chew, my mouth would swallow, and I’d try to remind myself why this was happening. I’d wanted this. I wanted to be free, and so did she. This was the only way for us to escape. I had to do this. I had to kill everyone just to survive. There wasn’t any other way.

I struggled to try to get up. My hands were steady, but the rope was still far too tight. I couldn’t move out of it no matter how hard I tried. In the back of my mind, I knew I was supposed to try to run away. I’d even half-heartedly tried. But that went with the voice that told me to be afraid, and I still wasn’t. I still couldn’t find it within myself to be afraid of Calce. Not anymore. 

I was wondering whether I should try to get closer to her, when I felt a hand on my leg. It clenched in a vice, and I muffled a cry of pain.

“You,” Jack grunted as he slowly pulled his head up to glare at me. Half his face was burned, but it was his back end that had gotten the worst of it. A human would have been dead, but Jack was insistent on running the charred remains of his college student body into the ground. His legs little more than a charred corpse, but those same dreadful eyes were twisted into anger were as bright as ever. Instead of that annoying grin, his teeth were gritted in a snarl. His eyes were wide with accusatory rage. “You did this. Again. It’s always you. You’re fault.”

“You’re the one too busy having fun being an evil villain to actually do the villainy.” I kicked out at him, but my broken body screamed in resistance. “You could have left us alone. You could have left this whole town, but you didn’t because you thought that she was ever on the same level as you.”

He laughed as he used my own body to pull himself closer. Only his arms were still usable, and they too were charred. His blackened skin flaked onto me and revealed muscle tissue that had been cooked grey in the blast.

“I can still kill you,” he hissed. “I can still destroy the one thing she cares about.”

“When are you going to figure out that you’re not the smart one here, Jack?” I kicked again, and this time sent the arm of the weakened demon off of me. I cringed against my own pain. “You lost. Everyone’s dead. Calce is killing them all off as we speak. Don’t you get that you’re finished?”

“What.” He blinked. “I can’t – fuck, one second.” He ripped the earplugs out of his ears and let them roll away. “I think the fuckers half melted in my ears… Stop blathering and let me fucking kill you, okay?”

“You’re the least intimidating or prepared evil villain I think I’ve ever seen.”

“Fuck you. You’re the one that doesn’t get it, Andy.” He spotted the wooden stake on the ground in front of us, and his eyes widened as he struggled to squirm after it. “You don’t get how hard it is to do this. How hard it is to raise an army, kill off everyone in my way, and make the world in my image. It’s a hard job, I’m telling ya. And I don’t have time for annoyances like you in my way. You and Calce have been nothing but a thorn in my side.”

“Annoyances? Are you still deluding yourself, Jack? That you’re the one that has the upper hand? Why don’t you top being blind, and look around? The only thing you ever had was understanding of how demons worked. Even that is useless here.”

“Shut up! I can rebuild, I did it before!”

“Rebuild with what, half a body?” I sighed and slumped back into the damaged pew. “Just give up, Jack. It’s hopeless. You can’t even throw things around in a church, can you? You’re nothing.”

“Never!” He struggled further, only getting an inch at a time towards his prize. His eyes bulged out of his skull as he wormed slowly closer.

“I get it. You’re just a poltergeist. You’re nothing special, and the only thing you’ve got is smarts. I understand that. I’m human, we get told we’re nothing special all the time.”

“I’m nothing like you,” he coughed as he reached one broken limb out after the other. “I’m a demon! No self-respecting demon would EVER bow to something as weak as you.”

“Weak?” I chuckled faintly. “I know. But still…” I shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah I guess you’re right. We’re nothing alike. Because I won, and you? You lost.” Maybe he hadn’t noticed that the screams had stopped echoing throughout the church, but I had. The ghastly creature out of the corner of my eye had finished her feast, and the movement of a squirming cripple drew her like a shark to the scent of blood and weakness. He had just managed to reach the wooden stake when he realized he was looking at a pair of red sneakers. He looked slowly up to see the beige slacks streaked with blood, and then the tux of the demon covered in the remnants of his poor army. Her sightless eyes peered back down on him as she saw the stake, then kicked it away from his outstretched hands. Her breath came in ragged gulps with her entire body bunched up, looking at Jack like he was a snack just waiting to be eaten.

“Calce?” I called? I peered my head over nervously. “Calce, are you there?”

Her head twitched up like a bird. I flinched when those eyes locked with mine. There was nothing human left. Not even the ghost of a soul. Jack chuckled tiredly and let himself lie motionless on the ground.

“She isn’t your Calce anymore, Andy. And she’s sure as hell not going to spare you.” His desperate grin widened. “You smell like food. You are food, to us. Right, Calce? You might have freed her, but you’re still going to fuckin’ die. You’ll die.”

“You’re lying,” I retorted. Tentatively, I smiled at the demon whos’ wings fanned out behind her. Her horns glistened white, her tail streaking out and flicking between her legs. “Calce, it’s me, right? It’s Andrew. We need him alive, so we can exorcise him. Just… Just calm down.” She froze in place for a moment. Her eyes almost seemed to glow in the dark din of the church. That twitch in her hands… I thought she had actually listened. I was desperately looking for reason on those eyes. But then my world turned upside down as she lunged over the remains of the pew and knocked me to the charred ground. The air in my lungs was gone and I gasped desperately as her jaw locked in a snarl, her claws digging into the sides of my shoulders.

“It’s me,” I choked. “Andrew. Your Summoner.” My brain was overwhelmed with the pain from her size and heft pinning me to the ground; her wings weighed more than she did. Her teeth were so close. Inches away from my neck, longer than normal and tinged with red from the destruction she’d wrought around us. She looked at my unprotected throat with her mouth drooling blood and saliva. A hunger in her eyes unlike anything I’d ever seen.

She couldn’t remember me.

I pressed my forehead against hers, and she twitched. Her head drew up to face me, and her bloody eyes narrowed. She was trying to focus on something, something she couldn’t quite see. I whimpered under my breath as moment after moment passed. “Calce,” I sighed. “Please. Come back to me. I’m right here.” Trusting in my gut was terrifying. 

“Summoner,” she murmured after a few seconds of terrifying silence. I breathed a sigh of relief as her eyes began to clear in front of me. She blinked as the sharp slits of her red eyes returned, finally focusing on my pale face. “Andrew.” She reeled back with her eyes widening. “I’m sorry. I…” She looked around at the mess she’d made, and swallowed. The devastation was everywhere. Bodies littered the floor. Some were draped over burned furniture. Some had their matching limbs on the other side of the church. “Hell. I’m… I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to see that.” The more she took in, the guiltier she looked. She clenched her blood-soaked hands nervously.

“It’s alright. You did it. We’re free. Well-“ I winced against the bonds that still dug into me. “Mostly free. A little help?”

“Oh right shit sorry.” She knelt down to use a thin flame at the tip of her finger and burn away at the strands. Her eyes kept drifting to me. Waiting to see if I’d push her away. As soon as I could, I gripped her shoulder to help me stand. Even afterwards I couldn’t seem to find the strength to stand up on my own. Instead, she carefully lay me beside the pew before turning to see Jack’s form hastily gripping the wooden stake.

“Don’t come any closer,” he snarled. “Stay away. I’ll kill Andy, just you watch. Then you’ll have nothing, you hear me?”

“I’m sorry about what I did,” she muttered to me again. Neither of us bothered to look at the pitiful poltergeist. 

“It’s alright. I wasn’t scared.”

“Aren’t any of you listening?” Jack screeched. “I’ll kill you! I’ll- I’ll fine a way to kill both of you!”

“What the hell do you mean, not scared? This place is a massacre.” She looked around dubiously.

I smiled faintly at her. “It was you, the whole time. I trust you to keep me safe, Calce. And you trust me. Don’t you?”

“I…” She gulped, and nodded. “I trust you, Summoner.”

“This is the rudest thing I’ve ever seen!” Jack continued to wave the stake around to demonstrate his point. “You’re not even listening!”

“Then see if you can find me that bible.” I grinned. “Jack here’s given me a wonderful idea. And I’d love to shut him up.”

“What are you two nattering about?” Jack snapped. His eyes darted from me to Calce’s swift recovery of the only half singed book that lay near Lou. The poor kid had mostly blocked it from the blast, but it still smoked from Calce’s proximity as she gingerly made her way back over. The book changed from hand to hand as she tried to keep the burning to a minimum. Her tail slinked in and out between her legs without her paying much attention to it, but her wings seemed to get in the way at every opportunity, catching on bodies and wooden pews. Thankfully she didn’t have to experience the pain of the inlaid crosses, though. Those had been burned off in the massive gout of fire to nothingness.

“Now, you’re going to need the earplugs that Jack so painstakingly brought for this,” I smiled up at her and pointed to the discarded remains of them. “Just in case anything happens to you.”

“What… Really? Do you think you could do it? But you’re not a priest.”

“Could what?” Jack snarled and brandished the wooden stake towards Calce again as she went to pick up the ear plugs. “What are you planning? What is it? Tell me!”

“He’s annoying when he has nothing to fall back on,” Calce droned. The slight smirk on her face proved she was enjoying every second of it.

I flicked over the book, and a grin played on my lips just the same. “Lou wasn’t a priest. I don’t need holy water, or to be holy myself. This doesn’t look too difficult. If that kid could do it, I certainly could. It’s all… Presence in the end, isn’t it?” Calce placed the earplugs in her ears, then sat back on one of the pews. 

“If you would, maestro. Begin your piece.”

The difficult part wasn’t the pronunciation of the words, I found. The difficult part was the fluctuation in power that seemed to grow and change with every word. Understanding that, let alone controlling it was difficult. But the power that came with it was exhilarating. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a strength in these words when I read them. Everything had weight. Every syllable was a physical blow to the monster that had made our lives miserable. Reading something had only ever felt this way once before. But summoning Calce had been easy, it had been the simple reading of words on a page with my heart beating a mile a minute. Looking back, I shouldn’t have been able to do it. I shouldn’t have been able to summon something pitiful like Jack, let alone a demon as mesmerizing as her. I hadn’t understood it then. The power that came with those words flew right over my head.

But my words had power. They always did. I couldn’t pretend it was fake anymore, and I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t a part of all of this. I was no bystander, sitting and letting Calce do whatever she pleased. This time it was her that sat gleefully beside me, and I was the one making Jack contort in absolute agony. The simple words caused a darkness beneath him to grow, until red streamed from within it and pooled around the struggling poltergeist. I made those arms grab him and pull him every which way as he slowly sunk into the floor boards still screaming. His legs dangled uselessly but he stabbed for his life. Each spasm of pain knocked him off his form again, until there was nothing but pan and hatred in his eyes as he was helplessly pulled below. I was the one that made his screams die away to whimpers as he disappeared back into the recesses from where he came from.

Then it was over. I pushed the book to the side, and felt the pain finally wash over me. Calce dove for me before I could fall, but I was still steps away from fainting.

“We did it,” I breathed, and looked up hazily to see her face. 

She grinned confidently. “Hell yeah we did.” 

My brain was growing fuzzy, but with one last surge of strength, I grabbed her face and brushed her lips against mine.

The kiss was sloppy, and her shock made it a bit one-sided. I pulled away sheepishly and waiting for something to come of her frozen expression.

Her grin slowly widened until it was ear to ear.

“Wow, that might be the worst kiss I’ve ever had. You nearly gouged yourself on my horns.”

“Shut up,” I groaned. She picked me up in her arms with a laugh and turned for the door.

“No, seriously. That’s the worst one. Do you know how the tongue even works?”

“I was afraid of your teeth, okay? They’re even bigger than before and I don’t want to lose my tongue.”

“Afraid of my teeth? Really?”

“I just saw you brutally murder at least a dozen people. Please let me walk I feel like even more of an idiot being carried.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being carried,” she argued, but let me down all the same. Her tail twined around my body protectively as I struggled to stand. The shaking bruised knees buckled for a moment, but held long enough for her to break the door open. The melted mess of the lock fell down at our feet.

“Yeah, well…” I sighed. “Still.”

“I know, Summoner.” She brushed her lips against my neck. “If you want to suffer to seem tough, go right ahead.”

I shivered, my hand flying up to rub my neck. My cheeks heated. “It’s not that. I just… I’m tired. It’s late. Let’s…” I sighed. “Let’s just leave this place.”

“Leave…” She repeated, then sighed. Her arms tightened around me for a moment, then loosened. “Andrew, the police were after you for an update on the assault.” I paused, then slowly turned to stare at her. “They were worried about your safety and called in the others because they thought you would be targeted. They thought the attack was linked to the bombing. They thought you were a witness. They think you’re innocent.”

“You’re… You’re kidding.”

“You could still go home.” She smiled faintly. “You’re not going to be blamed for anything.”

I looked at her, then back at the church. It was barely holding on. Whatever it had been on the outside was now a ruin. A few fires still burned as the roof slowly turned to charred crackling wood.

“Do you really think that?” I smiled.

She kicked at a rock sheepishly. “Well, you could blame arson.”

“Nah,” I fell against her. She was warm, and I was tired. Her wings enveloped me, and the warm cocoon almost put me to sleep on the spot. “It’s for the best that we go. Both of us. I trust you.” I pressed my face against her neck and let her wrap her arms around me.

“Trust me to lead us to the middle of nowhere in a forest, right?”

“I’m not scared of a forest.” I grinned. “Are you?”

Every step we took away from that fire was painful. But I’d never felt so light.


	20. Trapezing Through a Haunted Forest at Night

“So,” Calce finally broke in. “You gonna let me pick you up or not?”

I gave her a defiant look and pushed her wandering hands away from picking me up. “I can walk!”

“Summoner this is getting ridiculous.” The night continued on growing ever darker the further we travelled into the woods. The sounds of the forest prickled on the back of my neck as we trekked, with only the light of the stars and moon dappling through the trees to guide us. It was too dark to see more than a few feet ahead. Even still, I felt alive. The air was clear and so was my mind. The world around us seemed brighter than before, no matter how dark it might have been. I’d never felt so alive before. To know I wasn’t the same person as before, to know what I was capable of, and to be a part of her world… It felt unceremonious for her to throw me over her shoulder.

“Really,” I grunted. “There’s nothing broken. I think.” I hadn’t actually bothered to check, but the thunderous pain that had been happening with every step was slowly dialing itself down to a chronic aching that never wanted me to forget about its existence. And this, I could most certainly deal with. I could be like an animal, walking along a forgotten forest path, breathing in the chill night air and enjoying what the world had to offer. A little hurt wasn’t going to stop me.

Another step, and I lost my glasses while tripping over a tree root. She caught me at the last second with an eyeroll and I was the one to grab my glasses out of the air by pure chance and keep them from breaking even further against whatever rock it might be unlucky to land on. She pulled me back up to meet her as I carefully positioned them back on my face. I smiled nervously at her amused grin.

“Nothing broken?” She taunted. “You can barely take more than a couple steps without tripping over your own feet. Summoner, I regret to inform you, but you’ve got two left feet and both of them are broken. We’ve got no one to run from-”

“Police-” I countered.

“And we’ve got nowhere to be-”

“Anywhere that isn’t here-” I interrupted.

“So just sit down and rest already.” She pushed me against a tree. “Have a chance to heal from that beating. Not to mention your adrenaline is still in high gear here. You’re running on fumes and you probably don’t even know it.” She unceremoniously plopped herself down with her massive wings fanning out awkwardly behind her. The large bat-like webbed appendages knocked against tree branches and caught on shrub vegetation as she struggled to make herself comfortable on the pine needle bed she’d thrown me onto. Though the tail folded neatly around her like a well-behaved child, the wings were so unruly that no position she took would keep them from getting caught on a rogue branch. They ended up fanning out around the both of us like a wall of red and grey as she let out a sigh of defeat.

“I thought I was supposed to be the stubborn one,” she finally grumbled. “Here you are chomping at the bit to get ourselves lost in a godforsaken wood and I’m the one who’s gotta reign you in. The hell are you trying to pull?”

“Maybe you’re used to adventure and freedom, but I’m not.” I grinned, brushing her hair out of her face. She frowned and quickly put it back to where it was before so she could once again turn into a red eyed cyclops. “You’re Calce, remember? Jack always liked to say how important your life was before mine. This must be nothing to you, this running around to escape a burning church. But to me, this is everything. This – this feels like the start of a whole new life and I don’t even know what to think anymore. I could believe anything. I could learn anything. I exorcised a demon, Calce.” I watched her earnestly. “There’s no telling what else I could do if I put my mind to it. Besides,” I continued in a teasing tone. “You’re pretty annoying yourself, you know.”

“I might be used to this… I can’t recall how many burning churches I’ve run away from - But that doesn’t matter. I get you have a new found tapped potential here, but I still need to take care of you. It’s been an hour and this is the first time you’ve even stopped walking.”

I blinked. “An hour? Really?”

“Yeah. You’re too high on euphoria to see it, but yeah.” Her fell back against her own wings with a grunt. “I don’t now how far out from Ridegden we are, but it has to be miles. Even in your condition, we’ve gone far. We could have taken a break half an hour ago. Probably should have.” She looked at me, and a smirk played on her lips. “Are you afraid of a little forest, Summoner? You got that look on your face again.”

“No…” I mumbled. “Not anymore.”

“Then why the long face?”

“It’s not that I’m afraid. I just… I’m wondering. When I moved here, I wasn’t happy for a lot of reasons. But one of them was because of this forest.”

“… Were the pine cones particularly violent?”

“People went missing here. All the time. They’d exist in the town, going about their business, and one day they’d go into the forest for a reasonable purpose. Sometimes for just a minute to grab something that had been thrown past the treeline. And then they’d just be gone. Vanished.” I looked over the tree canopy that seemed to hold the stars at bay above us. They tangled around each other like grabbing hands. I suppressed a shiver. “I didn’t want to be afraid of something because of a stupid reason like that.”

“Well it is just a stupid urban legend.”

“Except it isn’t. The police reports go back years and years.” I let my body drop against hers, and closed my eyes. She was unbearably warm, but I’d rather deal with too hot than the freezing chill of the forest. “I did what I always did when I come face to face with something that doesn’t make any sense. I got others online together, and we researched. We tried to come up with reasonable explanations for why something like this would happen. We talked about the Thorn killings that went back a few years here and maybe it was another weird offshoot of that, but these went back ages. We’re talking hundreds of years. Since the founding of the place. I always thought that was strange.”

“Thorn killings?”

“Just another reason not to want to move here.” I shrugged. “Police in this county suck as catching murderers. At least they’ve stopped. But the disappearances are pretty regular.” I opened my eyes to peer up at her curious expression. “They never drop off the face of the earth, there’s always a documented witness that at least notices them entering the forest, and then poof. Gone. I always thought it was scary, but that there was a plausible reason. And I guess… I liked the idea. Of the mystery. That there was something beyond, like the movies I watched, but in real life. But then I also didn’t believe in it, or anything and…” I groaned. “It’s confusing. I wanted to believe in things that would make the world more interesting. Not things that would change my morals.”

“… But you’re not scared now that you’ve been proven wrong.”

“I always thought that it was maybe bad neighborhood kids, or maybe Thorn killing copycats, but no one on the forums could agree. Peter Michaels was in the news for a bit with his controversy, but I doubted someone dumb enough to end up on the news could pull off something with that much finesse. And… Now I think it’s something else.” I stroked her cheek. “Something more like you. And that’s why I’m not scared.” I smiled faintly. “I got you, and you’re best at killing the things that are like you. We’re not the random people that disappeared and were never seen again. We know this world exists. We’re a part of it now. And you’re my guardian angel.”

She laughed so loud that I had to hide an ear against her thigh to keep from the ringing in my ears. The other I slapped a hand on as she nearly shrieked at the hilarity. “Guardian angel?” She eventually stopped crying long enough to make out. “Guardian angel, Summoner?”

“I guess that’s a bit blasphemous.” I smiled sheepishly up at her. Her laughed died quickly with the trees tempering all sounds away to nothing. “I don’t know, I was feeling kind of poetic.”

“Utter blasphemy,” she agreed. “Still hilarious.”

An hour later I got to watch Calce’s extra appendages disappear as ash in the wind. One moment her wings were curled around me like a protective barrier, and the next they drifted away. Like the flames had gone out and left nothing but remnants, they settled on the ground and blended into the undergrowth as if the wings were never there. She stretched like a cat as I watched her in disbelief.

“I can’t stay like that forever, you know,” she said eventually when she caught my eye. “The amount of power I have to manifest to keep that going needs to be replenished. I may be a sun on legs, but when that untapped energy gets tapped, you can’t keep it tapped forever.”

“I suppose… I expect them not to last forever, but I thought perhaps they just… popped away. That was kind of beautiful.”

“Beautiful? Not the words I would use. It’s like shedding a skin. Kind of gross, and now it’s everywhere.”

“It’s also convenient,” I observed.

“The wings aren’t the problem. They’re strong, provide protection and are a great shield.” She puffed her chest out. “No matter how wonky they might be outside of fighting, it was always a great last ditch effort in a sparring match. But the real problem… Well, it’s not exactly the wings.” She stood up awkwardly to shake any of the ashy remnants out of her hair.

“What?”

“Horns.” She blurted abruptly. “Sensitive.”

“…. Right. Sensitive. Okay.” This wasn’t a piece of conversation I was interested in having. Not right now, anyways. “We should get going while the moon is still high in the sky.” I scrambled to my feet on unsteady legs.

“It’s not going to help much.” She seemed grateful for a change in topic. “Still way too dark to see properly.”

“We’ll manage.” I assured her. “We have this far.” 

The walking continued as the hours dragged on under the dark and unstable night. The world was strange and alive, the sound of creatures lurking under every corner occasionally sending shivers down my spine. Reminding myself that Calce was still there kept me going, though. That, and constant breaks. I fought her every step of the way on them, but they were the only thing that kept me from collapsing meekly in her arms. She kept warning me that I was running myself ragged. Maybe I was, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to move. I wasn’t running away from something, I was running towards something. What it was, I had no idea. But I could feel it in the air. Of course, I’d never have to deal with my father again. My family wouldn’t have to deal with me, and I wouldn’t have to deal with them. The police wouldn’t be able to go sniffing if they ever found their story didn’t make sense. But I cared little about the past. It was another person’s life.

Calce padded alongside me more like an animal and less like a person. Her eyes almost glowed in the dark of the night. Her hair shadowed one side, but the other was a ruby, almost lighting the way. She belonged in the forest. Her feet never faltered, her eyes never wavered from the dark path ahead. She was confident in her crouched stride, when I seemed to find every root there was. The elegance and beauty would have been lost on anyone else, but it took my breath away. 

“Hey, Calce,” I interrupted the silence.

“Yeah?” Her head flicked over at the sound of my voice.

“So, I’m also kind of in love with you.”

“… Uh huh.”

“Yeah.”

“… Yeah.”

“I just thought I should say it, or something. In case you got the wrong idea.”

“Ah yes, I can’t tell the difference between a friendly kiss and a not friendly kiss.”

“Well I didn’t know when else I should say it and I didn’t want to wait until later and then end up with you questioning things and me questioning things and I’m still kind of iffy about the details because we haven’t even known each other that long and I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow so. I’m in love with you. My world’s turned upside down and I am in love with you, Calce.”

She went silent for a moment and I was almost worried. It was stupid. She and I both knew it was dumb. Then her shoulders began to shake, and a heaving laugh rumbled from her throat. “Thanks.”

“Thanks? What does that even mean?”

“Man, you’re anxious. I’m in love with you too, so don’t worry your pretty little human head about it.” She flashed a toothy grin, and my breath caught in my throat again.

“You have a funny way of showing it. Laughing at me when I’m trying to be sensitive.”

“Are you afraid that I’m lying? Want me to pin you against a tree and show you?”

I choked on my own tongue. “What?”

“There are plenty of convenient trees around,” she purred. That glint in her eyes reminded me that she was no stranger to romance. And I was very, very much out of my depth. I turned away quickly and pushed my glasses up with a nervous cough. “No thank you. Let’s just keep walking.”

“Keep walking where? We got nothing better to do.” 

“Well we could try to determine our heading,” I mumbled. 

“I think I’d prefer making out to be honest.”

“Calce!” 

“Give you something more than a dumb kiss that had a weird tongue thing because you got scared of a little fang,” she teased, and opened her mouth. “Look. See? They’re back to normal. Just shark teeth now. As per usual. Chompy chompy.”

I stared at them with my cheeks growing hotter, then quickly shook my head.

“No – I – you should be getting our bearings with flying up there. Stop teasing me.”

“Jeez you’re wary of kissing.” She closed her mouth with a pout. “Why can’t we just-”

“Bearings, Calce.”

“Fine!” She huffed, turning about with a scowl.

“You’re being a bit silly about this.”

“After liking you for ages, having you admit you also like me, and now you’re pushing me away at every opportunity?” She twisted her head back until she was looking at me upside down. I raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I get to be silly. Because you’re utterly oblivious. And a total virgin afraid of even making out. No wonder you didn’t have anybody before me. You’re afraid of girls.”

“You liked me from the beginning?”

“Ah yes, ignoring the virgin taunt. Totally like you. You’re ridiculous, Summoner.” She snorted and swiftly stood up straight again. I reached out to grab her, but she flew up in her tiny squeaking form before I could catch her. I watched her go with an incredulous smile, then bit my lip and resigned myself to standing against a trunk.

The world went quiet again. I closed my eyes, feeling the silent breeze moving the branches effortlessly. I pushed my glasses back up out of habit, but my hand froze when I heard a twig crack. With a swiftly beating heart, I risked opening an eye. There was nothing but trees framing a darkness in front of me. I squinted in the darkness, trying to see if that shadow at the edge of my features was moving or not. It could have been a branch, or even a small harmless animal. Whatever it was, it had made that crack. It must have. I couldn’t remember if it had been there before. I kept trying to focus, but the more I did, the more it no longer seemed to exist. A shiver went up my spine as I tried to look more deeply, but now it seemed like my mind was looking for something that wasn’t there. My heartbeat was racing again. Ideas were flitting through my head. I tried to shoot them all down. It had to be a branch. Or a rabbit. Perhaps a squirrel. Even a smaller bat, perhaps, in the canopy grabbing at moths. I was seeing things. It was dark, and I was tired, and I must have been trying to make sense of the meaningless shadows.

Calming my breathing, I closed my eyes again.

“Summoner?”

I screamed.

“CALCE. DON’T.” I turned about wide eyes to look at the demons’ amused grin.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of the forest,” she drawled.

“I’m not!” I said quickly. “I… I saw something. That’s all. Just something in the trees. It… Probably…” I scratched the back of my head. “It was most likely just a branch moving.”

“As much as I love leaving you to do dumb tasks like getting bearings or listening in on people, I really don’t like leaving you to hallucinate. Or in the case there is something there, getting killed by some random creature. You already told me about the rumors, and I care a little more about hungry wolves or bears. Haven’t we learned?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Well if we didn’t send you out, then you wouldn’t know where we are.” I paused. “You know where we are now, right?”

“There’s another town about four hours walk from here.”

“In the forest? Another one?” That hadn’t been in the forums. This place was wilderness if it weren’t for Ridgeden, the town that had originally been settled for logging. There wasn’t a reason for any other, and nothing was on any maps. I furrowed my brows. Something wasn’t right here. 

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Another small town like Ridgeden. It looked like there was some kind of road cutting through the forest from your town to there, but other than that, it seemed completely isolated. We could try there. It’s east.”

“Where have we been heading? Haven’t we been going south? That’s the way to the city.”

“I… I may not know my cardinal directions well enough in the middle of a forest. All the… trees and whatnot.” She smiled nervously at my glare. “Hey, I know my way. I’ve been getting around on my own plenty fine before you. But I’ve never been completely marooned in the middle of a pitch-black forest that’s already dark as hell when it’s the middle of the day. I’m surprised I’m not more off track. We’ve been meandering south… A little bit, at least.”

“But just how far off have we been going?”

“South east. Mostly east. Maybe just east. Which is why I was suggesting that town. We’re already heading that way, and at least there might be food or something for you. Maybe a car. We can use that, head through Ridgeden, then bam. Right out towards the city.” She grinned. “And then I can see just how much humanity has evolved in close quarters over the years. I wonder if it’s still easy to nab a snack in the middle of the night…”

“Focus, Calce. No eating people,” I warned. “But that isn’t a terrible idea… I mean. It is. We have no money, no way of getting anywhere other than walking, and we may or may not be wanted by the police by now, or at the very least have a lot of explaining to do to my parents. But as much as I just love this forest, and I certainly do I’m not scared in the slightest, I feel like perhaps heading towards something rather than nothing is a step in the right direction. I just don’t know what we’re going to do when we get there.” I’d probably forgotten it. It must have been something smaller, something that could have been left off whatever map I’d found. It wasn’t worth noting.

“Several steps actually. Five hours worth.”

“You said four.”

“I usually fly, I don’t know how long your broken feet are gonna take us.”

“Calce.” I grabbed her by the shoulders, then turned her about. “Go. Lead. Just stop talking.”

“But I love talking,” she whined.

“Mush. Go. Yip yip.”

“You’re very rude.” Her teeth sparkled with another wide grin as she tilted her head back up at me. “Kiss me and I’ll think about it.”

“This again?”

“You can’t say you’re in love with me then treat me like a chaste virgin. I won’t melt.”

Hesitating at first, I resigned to pecking her on the cheek before she could argue anymore. Her eyes widened in shock, then turned abruptly before I could see her reddening face any longer.

“What was that?” I smirked. “I thought you said kissing was nothing.”

“Shut up.” She punched me lightly in the shoulder. “You’re annoying.”

“Oh, now I’m the annoying one?” I tried to walk around to face her, but she was already wandering further into the forest, mumbling something I couldn’t hear. But that didn’t matter. I’d won.

The night continued on, and the dark shadows around us seemed to fluctuate with every step. In one blink, I thought I would see the shadow of a figure stretching out in front of us, his eyes blacker than any shade. In the next moment, it was a tree that I was sure hadn’t been there before. A shrub looked like a crouching animal until I was right up in front of it fully expecting it to gouge out my entrails. The call of some strange animal off to our left almost knocked me into Calce’s back. She looked back skeptically, then continued walking when I waved her off. She wasn’t afraid of any of this. Of course, she wouldn’t be. And I thought I wouldn’t either with her right in front of me. But if Calce was in front of me, that meant there was no Calce behind me. And no Calce behind me, meant my back was uncovered. If not that, then something was watching me from the right. Eyes bored into the back of my skull. I could feel them on me with every step. I wasn’t wanted here. They wouldn’t accept me in their world. I swore I could see eyes trailing us as I followed the demon along an animal footpath. Black, or perhaps white. Everything was shades of grey in this world. The only color came from Calce’s eyes, and she’d taken to lead. All I could see was the faint glow that reflected off the trees she looked at.

“What happened…” I murmured to her. “I thought I could handle this.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My breath came in wispy vapors. No matter how much I rubbed my arms, a chill remained.

“Are you tired?”

“I don’t know… Maybe?”

“You might be seeing things.” She paused to survey our dark surroundings. I couldn’t see much more than the closest trees. “I don’t smell anything. Or see anything either. It just seems like a normal forest to me.”

“You don’t get scared, though.”

“That’s not true.” She smiled wryly at me. “I was afraid of you dying.”

“Don’t be romantic I’m trying not be afraid right now.”

“Okay. You’re mister logic here. So, let’s think about this logically. The only thing that could hurt you is what, rumors that you and your buddies talked about online? Or maybe a bear? Are there even bears here? A wolf? Doesn’t even seem like wolf territory to me-”

The howl that rang through the forest sent a chill to my very soul. Loud and melodic, it rippled around us, both at our sides and to the furthest reaches of the forest. When it finally ended, the silence was deafening.

I looked shakily to Calce.

“Yes.”

“I can kill wolves.” She pouted. “Don’t let timing fool you. They’re just mindless animals.”

“Right…” I sighed. “Right. I suppose it doesn’t matter with you here.” This was ridiculous. I was afraid of nothing. I had a demon right here in front of me. I’d seen her massacre dozens and I was afraid of wolves. And a forest being darker than I was used to. I couldn’t let rumors scare me, nor animals. “Just stay close to me, I suppose. Then I should be fine. Nothing’s going to hurt us.”

“I’m not going to play that game again and go gallivanting off because you said so.” She took my hand and continued to trudge through the underbrush. “I’d tie you to my side if I could keep you safe that way.”

“Maybe don’t do that, I’d still like to be able to move on my own,” I said. The chill was staved off by her warm touch, but I still found myself rubbing my arms.

“I dunno. You tend to wander.”

“Me?” I scoffed, and gripped her hand tighter. “You’re the one that meanders away as soon as the mood strikes you. I can’t even pin you down.”

“You’re the one ordering me to leave half the time,” She smirked over her shoulder.

“And the other half of the time you’re in too much of a hurry to enjoy freedom.” I caught up to her and stole a kiss before she could turn away.

“Hey.” Her face reddened, but I probably matched her. “No fair.”

“I’m trying to get used to it,” I mumbled and quickly corrected my glasses. “You should be good at this.”

“Yeah yeah. I’m a total romance freak. With all the mayhem and massacre, I never really had time for anyone other than, well, her. No one ever caught my eye. I was usually too busy eating them.”

“I suppose I should be thankful that you were tied to protecting me. Without that spell and all, well.”

“Well, that and you rescued me. I don’t take that lightly. Freedom, Andrew.” She looked up at the sky. “It’s not just something for you, that you’re feeling now. I feel it too. I’ve felt it ever since you’ve rescued me. Hell doesn’t compare. The darkness, congestion, screams and nothing natural. They don’t even have trees. At least, where I was.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty hellish.”

She snorted. “Maybe a little.” Her grin widened, then faltered as she whipped her head around like a bird. The demon’s stance changed as she crouched lower, her hand still gripping mine in a vice. Her nose wrinkled as she judged what I believed to be some kind of scent. I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me, but she narrowed her eyes and seemed to look deeper into the wood ahead of us. Something had her entire body clenched. Her eyes were narrowed, staring at something I couldn’t see and that only made it worse. The faint sound of teeth chattering echoed through a forest that I hated was now as silent as the grave.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something.” Her attention was elsewhere. Eyes swivelling about, trying to find the thing she knew was there. She couldn’t see it, but nothing could hide its scent. That familiar and gutturally horrific feeling of being watched made the hair on my nape rise. I tried to catch something with a quick twist of my head, but I got nothing more than those strange movements at the edge of my vision. A soft breeze moving the branches could look like anything in light this dark. I could never see more than that slight movement just out of the corner of my eyes, and the exhaustion that ebbed at me hour by hour wasn’t helping.

I gripped her hand tighter.

“What do you smell?” I asked with apprehension ebbing away at my senses.

“Something different.” She grumbled. “I can’t put my finger on it. It’s strange. I don’t like it.”

I swallowed. “What kind of strange, rumor monster strange, or giant man-eating bear strange?”

“Neither.” She fell into a full crouch and brought me with her as she took a few more tentative steps forward. Her head stretched outward, her eyes narrowing in an effort to see something, something that was nearly there. “Something in there… Smells…”

“Familiar?” The voice made my heart leap. Deep. But human. My heart felt as though it were beating out of my chest as I struggled to recall whether I’d actually heard a man’s voice respond to her, or if that had been my imagination. It only took one glance at Calce’s face to know.

Something in the dark had spoken to us.


	21. Yer a Warlock Harry

“What was that?” I whispered. My teeth snapped shut to nearly catch my tongue as Calce jumped up to her feet with wide eyes.

“No,” She said, not addressed to me but to the sound I knew I’d heard. “No. That’s not you.”

Fragile. She was like a broken doll. 

“I’m afraid it is.” As I struggled to stand up with a pained grunt, the owner of the voice tread silently into the gloom from the darkness that enveloped him like a cloak. His form was striking. Towering over me, let alone Calce’s small stature, his eyes were as black as the world around us. I couldn’t make anything else out other than his pale face at first. His hair was the same onyx color, slick against his face. He was a ghastly, strange image of a disembodied head floating in the din. “Who else would it be?” He asked. His thin, pale lips moved too perfectly. Every word was spoken with careful diction. The movements of his face and mouth made my skin crawl.

“Literally anyone else? What the hell are you doing here?” She stared up at the figure in disbelief. His clothes were slowly coming into focus as my eyes adjusted, but that didn’t make much more sense than the head. A trench coat, heavy steel-toed boots, and grey slacks. A strange combination of clothing that made little sense to me, but the eclectic mishmash seemed almost familiar. “We’re in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere and you suddenly appear out of nothing?” She continued when he merely watched her. “Hello? This doesn’t make any sense, have you been watching us?”

“No, Calce.”

“That’s not a fucking answer.” She growled, pacing around him without even seeming to realize it. For all of the anger, the broken cracking, and the betrayal I could feel was there, there was no fear in her voice. It made me relax ever so slightly. But it left more questions. Someone had met us in the middle of this forest, someone dark and confusing and that made no noise when he walked, but she knew him. And she wasn’t afraid. 

“I’m not sure you’re going to listen to me if I try to answer you-”

“Shut up!” She snarled. “You might be an illusion or something.” He uttered a long-suffering sigh.

“You can smell me, can’t you? I’m real.”

“Could be an illusion. Where did you even come from?” She demanded. “Why are you out here in the middle of the night? Huh? Tell me that! Yeah, didn’t think so.” I felt like I was watching a tennis match between them.

“Darktree. You were nearly there. I…” he bit his lip. “I knew you would be here. So, I came to get you.”

“How the fuck do you figure that? This mystical bullshit is why I don’t believe you.” She took another step towards him with her hands almost glowing with flame in the din. “You don’t sound like him and you don’t act like him. You don’t sound like Wolf at all. You can’t be him.”

“Calce,” I followed her warily as she took another step forward. “What are you doing?”

“He’s not real,” she insisted. “He’s some kind of fucky illusion and I want it dead.”

“Why would you think that?” I reached out to take her hand, but she swatted it away. Her eyes wouldn’t leave the ominous pale face that looked down on her like she was some angry, persistent child. Behind it, though, there was sadness. The unease of his gaze made me want to turn around and leave. I shoved that part of me deeper down where the rest of my fears lay.

“Because he was one of my kind. He’s a demon.”

With both sets of accusatory eyes on the creature, he raised a large, rugged hand that had been hiding behind his back, and coughed to break the tension. “I’m sure you’re confused.”

“Maybe a little.” I said as I watched his hand move with some apprehension. He looked the part of a demon, in a way that was entirely antithetical to Calce. There was nothing fiery about his personality. But a cloying fear was trying desperately to rise out of me at the sight of him. “You have the same scent as the person she remembers.” I needed to focus. “So you’re real. But that doesn’t answer how you found us. You’re being kind of… Mysterious. And I don’t like it.” My eyes couldn’t seem to rest on his features without looking away. The discomfort was impossible to quench. It was a dichotomy between an uncanny stare and a caring, calming and begging gaze. But his voice was strangely calm. Cheery, even. I tried to focus on that.

“I, well…” He drew his head from side to side with something weighing on his mind. “I was sent here.”

“By who?”

“That is exceedingly complicated and I really don’t think this conversation should be had so soon-”

“Answer the man!” Calce growled.

“Calce, it’s fine.” I pulled her back before she could light the entire forest on fire. “If he doesn’t want to answer that and would rather be mysterious, confusing, and altogether untrustworthy, that’s fine. But the bigger problem here is I don’t know who you are.” I looked to the male demon. “Or anything that’s going on right now. I’d just like some answers, if not that one. Just a start would be nice, so I’m not completely in the dark. You look… Terrifying, I’m not going to lie. But Calce isn’t afraid. And I’m not going to let myself be afraid either.”

“Afraid?” The man stared in disbelief. “Why?”

“You’re a hulking demon in the middle of the forest, why wouldn’t I be?” It was more than that. Maybe he was blind to it, but I wasn’t.

Calce looked up at me with a grin. “He’s toothless, Summoner.” She narrowed her eyes and looked back at the man. “If he’s real, that is.”

“Toothless isn’t the right word,” the man said tentatively.

“Toothless and cowardly. Broken demon.” She hissed. “The reason that everything fell apart. All of that fear and terror is for nothing.”

“Do you really want to do this now?”

“Toothless, broken, I don’t care,” I interrupted. “Calce, whatever you’re angry about, just contain yourself for a second and explain to me who the hell this is.”

She took a breath, then sighed and curled her fingers into agitated fists. “Fine. This… Is probably Rowan. Maybe. Maybe not. A couple thousand years back, he was one of us. He was created in the shadows of hell with the same end goal of becoming a demon, like me. Human to monster, he has the same creator.”

“That devil thing Jack was talking about? Phyreo or whatever?”

“Sure. Yeah. We were in the same group. But he changed, into something so annoying and terrible that it makes me sick to my stomach.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now I can’t even look at him. He’s like a chained mutt.” 

“He was in the same group as Shift?” I turned to look at him in a new light. He didn’t seem the murderous type, like Calce seemed to go on about when she described it. He looked more like a wounded animal, eyes darting between us with his brows furrowed in a continued desperation. What he was so desperate about, I had no clue.

“Yeah.” She clenched her fists and inadvertently gripped my hand in a vice. I winced, but said nothing. “He’s the reason that group fell apart. He ruined it all. He turned into a bleeding heart because he fell in love with a human. A… A human.” She paused, then looked at me.

“A human,” I echoed. At that, her eyes widened. Horrified realization struck her features. “… No.”

“Calce,” Rowan began with his arms raised defensively, “It’s not that big of a deal, just stay calm-”

“No FUCK you! I am not going to end up as a heart-broken, over-dramatic freak vowing never to feed again! Fuck that shit!”

“Calce, please.” He drew back, leaning against a tree and sitting back. At this level he was far less impressive, even with those strange eyes. His mouth was set in a thin frown, waiting for the spitfire of a demon to calm herself down. “That’s not what this is, and we’re not going to get anywhere with you acting this way.”

“You’re here to just tell me I told you so, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m here to help you. You’re both lost in a forest and your Summoner is obviously hurt. You can’t stay like this. There are things out here… ” His eyes dimmed. “If you just calmed down for a moment and listened to me, I could help.”

“Why the hell would you help me? I’m your enemy!” She was breathing sparks. 

“Enemies? Really? Were we ever enemies? Or did you just hate me for leaving you?” His entire body seemed to fluctuate. The shadows flocked to him like eager animals, desperate for his affection.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. For a moment I was watching her and waiting for her to yell again, to at least do something. I thought she would. But the fire in her eyes seemed to die away to nothing. Her entire body faltered, her shoulders shook, then she fell to the ground with a bitter laugh.

“Fuck you.”

The man took in a deep breath. “I know you’re hurting, Calce. I know. I hurt you. I made you afraid that others would run away too. Everyone abandoned you.” 

“Fuck you,” she repeated. “Fuck you, Wolf.”

“But this isn’t the time to hate me. Shift is gone. And I’m not your Rowan anymore. I’m not here to rub salt in the wound. Old wounds can be licked later, but not when you both need to find somewhere safe.” He stood up slowly again, passing the fire demon’s shaking shoulders with a gentle steaming hand stroking them for a moment. “If I knew it was going to take you this long to trust me, I would have started running earlier. I thought it would be better to come once you’d had a chance to rest, but it appears that I can’t reason with you.” He continued on. Large, heavy shoes stopped in front of me. I slowly turned my head up to try and take in those uncanny features. His smile wasn’t quite right either. I couldn’t judge him. There was too much there, and he kept everything hidden. Tucked away so all I could see was that desperation that never seemed to go away. “I’m here to help you,” he admitted. “Well, the both of you. But you, you’re need of a place to stay, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“What?” I stammered.

“That town that you’re walking towards, it’s not real,” he continued. “It’s not real, at least, according to satellite imaging. It’s not there if you look at any map. It doesn’t exist. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I…” The fire demon was at my side the moment she realized he was addressing me. All of that despair she’d had was gone from Calce as though it never happened, and instead her startling angry look was only focused on protecting me. The demon narrowed her eyes and hissed up at the stranger. She had herself planted firmly between him and I, forcing him to take a step back as she reached behind her to grasp my hand.

“Stay back,” she hissed in the guttural tones of an animal. “Maybe you fucked up, leaving me to fend for myself. But Andrew hasn’t. He can’t. You’re not taking him away from me.”

“You have nothing to worry about, Batty.” His smile remained, but his eyes for a moment seemed so tired. “I’m offering it to the both of you.”

“What, a place to stay?” I watched him carefully.

“Darktree,” he said simply. “It’s a town named Darktree.” He waited for me to respond, but I just narrowed my eyes and waited for a more satisfying answer. “It’s… A haven,” he continued reluctantly. “I’m not sure this kind of explanation is going to help. We’d be better off going there so I can show you myself. And we shouldn’t stay here, not this late and not this far out into the woods.”

“Yeah. No.” I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not following you into the woods. I want to know what I’m getting into,” I replied with adamant indignation.

“Something… Less complicated then,” he resigned. “I don’t even know where to start with that. We… Well, I know the basics of what happened to you. About the summoning, about Jack, about the party, about the aftermath of the church. I know this, because… I find people like you.” He paused at Calce’s wary glare. He was all too aware that he was on watch. Perhaps he didn’t realize how much. Ever mannerism, every pause, I was looking for lies. Anything that could have betrayed true feelings. Regardless of Calce’s personal distaste, I needed to know for myself whether he could be trusted. “I have a new line of work,” he continued hesitantly. “I work with people like you, Andrew, to give them safety. People that find themselves at the precipice of a world that they didn’t know existed and aren’t altogether prepared to deal with. The conflicting information that a human has with a world that stretches beyond their understanding can break their minds. I’ve seen it happen before.” He leaned down closer to me amid Calce’s warning growls. “I honestly thought it would happen to you. You had all of the signs of someone fully prepared to break down.”

“Why?” I narrowed my eyes. “I could deal with it. I wanted to know more. I still do. You’re only telling me things that whet my interest.”

“Maybe you don’t see what you were like before. I’m just… Glad I don’t have to pick up pieces again. But the world isn’t at your fingertips. It’s not something you can grasp in the palm of your hand and have controlled at your whim. It’s not Calce.” Abruptly, he turned his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at something neither Calce nor I could pick up. “… I shouldn’t be explaining this here, not so out in the open. We should be leaving as soon as possible. Have I explained enough? Are you satisfied?”

“Why? What is here? If you know so much, then tell me about the world. This forest. You said there’s something here. And I want to know. I can handle it. I’m not afraid.” It didn’t matter if I was. I had Calce’s hand holding mine as tight as could be.

“… Fine then,” he muttered. “If you’re so stubborn. The more time we spend here, the more likely we are to be ambushed by any one of the aberrations hidden away. Everything you’ve ever been afraid of is real, and all of it exists in this wood and in my town. Everything that could be stronger than Calce, stronger than me, all of is lurks in this forest. And you’re standing in the middle of it.” He looked down at me with that same desperate gaze. I could feel my throat closing up as he spoke. Only then did the words sink in. “Every single monster you’ve ever seen in a movie, everything you’ve ever read about, anything you’ve ever dreamed about, or someone has joked about in passing. All of it is real. And all of it is around us. The mythological lore that humanity stripped away to nothing more than story is what truly runs this world. Ridgeden sits on the edge of a world that should have never come in contact with humans. There’s a reason no one clear-cuts this place. That logging industry that Ridgden was so confidently founded on it ended before it ever truly got off the ground. The only thing they have left is tourism and hunting. They can’t go further because they’re pushing into a world that truly wants to see them dead.” He narrowed his eyes. “It wants you dead too. Are you afraid?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I am!” I gestured around us and nearly side-swiped Calce’s constant angry scowl in the process. “You just told me that I’m fucked because every horror movie I’ve ever watched, EVER, is real! Right?” I looked back at him with wide eyes and gulped when he nodded. “Right. So, I’m fucked, dead in the next few hours or something because I dunno, a werewolf? Maybe a vampire? A yeti? It’s a grab bag but something is going to come eat my brains out and the only other option is moving to a town where these things just… Live there. Normally. Like regular people. You’re telling a HUMAN to move to MONSTER TOWN. What kind of logic are you trying here? You’re here to scare me off of this monster world, but at the same time telling me to follow the pied piper to his scary evil town that doesn’t exist.”

“It’s not like that,” he began to argue, but I held up my hand to shut him up.

“No, no, it’s exactly that. I’m a human, I’m not supposed to be interacting with this world, I shouldn’t even know about it, and you’re telling me that because I know about it, what, I’ll only ever be welcomed in that world and not in mine?”

“I was just suggesting-”

“Are YOU going to protect me from the things that go bump in the night? Why should I go even closer to these monsters? I should be running! Why can’t I just bring Calce with me to the city?”

“She’ll eat everyone there,” he grumbled as he tucked his hands into his coat pockets. “It’s for the best if you come with me. I have information. Books. Safety. There are others out there that might try to harm you. And it’s not like what you’re saying. I understand your trepidation, but the town isn’t as lawless as my initial explanation might have you believe. The forest is a terrible place to be alone at night, but my town, it’s not the same. It’s not evil. It’s a haven, like I said-”

“I’m not moving to monster town.”

“It’s called Darktree and it’s a haven.”

“And what the hell kind of name is that!” I cried. “Darktree? A dark tree? You want me to move to the most foreboding sounding town in the world?”

“How much sleep have you had?” He cocked his head to the side.

“That is besides the point! Why should either of us trust you?”

“Now you’re sounding like Calce,” he mussed. I was starting to understand why the fire demon was so pissed off by him. That condescending tone in his voice made me want to do violent things that would most likely get me swiftly killed.

“Summoner.” Calce tugged my shirt. I was surprised to see her so calm when I turned around. All of that heat had been poured into me, apparently. “There’s something out there.” Her slitted eyes were watching something beyond me.

“What is out there?” I growled. “I’m tired of not being able to see anything here. Just tell me.”

“Something big, on four legs, and smelling like wet fur,” she clarified.

“A wolf.”

“Bigger than that.”

“A bear?”

“Bigger than that. And more than one. I can hear its gallop echoing around us. Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.” She looked at Rowan with a scowl. “And you can hear it too, can’t you? I couldn’t quite catch it before, but you’ve been keeping tabs this whole time.” He eyed her, then nodded. She continued with her hand still gripping my sleeve. “We don’t need to fight more tonight.”

“You could take it,” I argued. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“Because it’s you.” She pulled me closer. “I don’t want to come face to face with it because you’re hurt and I can’t fight and defend at the same time. There’s probably more than that out there. If he’s right, then we’ve walked into the proverbial Bermuda triangle, and we’re not going to be able to get out of here with your injuries. Not without help. You’ve be killed the second I turned away.”

“He wants to bring us somewhere worse.”

“Maybe. He’s an asshole, that I don’t deny. But he destroyed my world because he fell in love with humanity. The last thing he would do is let a human die under his watch.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “I hate this. I really hate this. But I’m going to have to listen to him. If it means keeping you safe.” She glanced back again to where Rowan had looked moments before. Her hackles were raised. I couldn’t hear or see a thing, but that feeling of being watched was returning. I was just about sick of feeling helpless. “The last thing I want is to see you on the floor getting a boot to the stomach again.” Her smile was so faint. It was a surprise to see her meek. But the both of us were tired, mentally and physically. Maybe we were the ones staring down an olive branch and telling him to take it away. “Okay?” She asked.

“… I thought you were supposed to be the angry one.” I took her hand in mine. “I should be the one telling you to get us the hell out of dodge right now, right?”

“You should have been asleep hours ago,” she countered. “I bet the sun’s going to be coming up soon. That can’t be healthy after everything you went through.”

“Come on, both of you.” Rowan began walking in the same direction we’d been heading. “Nothing will touch us as long as I’m here, but it’s better that we get Andrew in bed as soon as possible. Those wounds are worse than he realizes.”

“How bad?” Calce called after him.

“Bad enough that he’ll feel it in the morning. Don’t draw too much attention for now.”

Despite the long strides of the man, he walked with such slow ease that it wasn’t difficult for me to keep up. However, the silence of walking alongside him was stifling. His steps didn’t hit any stick or stone. If he did it intentionally, I was still loud enough for all of us. All it did for him was draw more attention to the fact that he was so obviously inhuman.

Whenever I glanced at him, I wished I hadn’t. The first demon other than Calce that wasn’t trying to kill me, and he was infinitely worse. It was in the way he held himself, in the way he reacted to the world around him. All of it was so carefully contrived to give the illusion that he was an ordinary person. But somehow, he’d failed. Maybe he hadn’t practiced enough, but I could see through it so easily. With Calce, it was so easy to see there was something off about her. Those unnatural eyes, the teeth that looked like they belonged to a meat grinder, even her attitude didn’t hide what she was.

It was as though I was walking towards the gallows. There was no idea what was on the other end, and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to find out. Between the forest and the possibility of a town that didn’t exist, it was ultimately still a tossup to me. I’d had enough of the awkward silence. “I still don’t trust you, you know.”

“I don’t expect you to, after what you’ve gone through.”

“That too.” I let him take the lead, so he remained in my sight. “You know more than you let on.”

“I do,” he admitted without hesitation.

“Every time I try to put my finger on what’s going on, I can’t seem to understand it. This world you’re talking about, the fact that you know so much. It’s all on my doorstep and I didn’t even realize.” I should have seen it from the beginning. I supposed I couldn’t kick myself over that. Others didn’t. I was just like them, before. Now… I wasn’t sure what I was.

“It’s everywhere,” he sighed. “Not just here.”

“Everywhere,” Calce caught. “So, where’s Tiger?”

“Around.” The dismissal was clear. The awkward silence returned, with both Calce and I under the same unspoken agreement. It didn’t matter who he was. We weren’t going to trust him. She might have stayed silent. I couldn’t.

“So…” I asked again. “Hell is real.”

“And Heaven.”

“And God?” His face fell.

“Yes.” I didn’t press it. He was too flighty.

“So, I’m going to Hell.”

“The inner workings of warlocks and demon husbandry are lost on me.” I wrinkled my nose.

“But I am going to Hell, right?”

“You should be going to sleep.” Avoiding the question. I was starting to realize why he looked so depressing. Finding everything hopeless would certainly lead to a constant frown.

“So, I’m going to Hell. You don’t have to sugar-coat it for me. I just wanted to confirm it. If you know so much, I want to know from a source. Am I going to Hell? Is it hopeless? Have I sold my soul?” Calce looked between us.

“You’re going to Hell, Summoner,” she chimed in. “That’s how it works. Wolf here might deny it, but he knows. We all know.” Her smile fell slightly. “I’m sorry, if it means anything.” 

“Right. Well. Thanks for confirming it, at least.” Hell. I supposed I signed up for it, I shouldn’t have expected anything less. “So. Demons. Real. Angels. Real. Monsters. Real.”

“You got something too,” Calce added.

“What, you?”

“Okay,” she grinned. “Two things. But you’re not helpless, Andrew.”

“Not helpless…” I mussed. “I suppose, the talent and such.”

“And if anyone could figure out the mysteries of getting out of a contract with hell, well…” Her grin widened to a toothy degree.

“Calce.” I stared at her. “You genius.”

“I’d help you every step of the way of course.”

“Cheating the devil himself? How blasphemous.” I laughed it off, but that charge of adrenaline and freedom was already starting to kick in again. It was crazy, dumb, and probably completely impossible. It was my favorite kind of impossible. The kind where everyone tells me I should just silently sit there and take it.

“Completely blasphemous,” she nodded in agreement, but her mischievous smile remained. “Doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

“Yes, completely impossible too,” Rowan looked between us with a raised eyebrow. “Cheat Hell? Are you serious?”

“I might be completely and utterly exhausted, but isn’t that the best time to be thinking of crazy half-baked plans?”

“Just…” He rubbed his face. “The two of you can make as many conspiracies as you want. Just keep walking.” He could pout all he liked, but Calce and I still laughed the night away with each other.

The town was no different to the one that I had left. The same streets that hadn’t been thought out much leading to winding roads that branch off towards the forest and ended in gravel edges. The same local storefronts that had seen better days. The same small houses that had been built in the last sixty years and hadn’t been touched since, other than the careful rendering of the front gardens to fake some semblance of order. It was the same.

As the dawn sky slowly grew overhead, and the sun broke through the outcroppings of trees that held the town so carefully in its grasp, the realization swept over me.

It wasn’t the same. It never would be the same. This wasn’t my world. This town wasn’t real. And I was surrounded by monsters that could kill me with little more than a look. I was a human breaking into somewhere I shouldn’t be.

A human who had summoned one of the most powerful demons I could, killed a hundred people, survived assaults and exorcised a demon along the way. Lived to tell the tale, in fact.

I’m sure I could handle monster town. Maybe another book of witchcraft, and I’d be fine.

I gripped Calce’s hand tighter in mine, and held my breath before taking a step forward.


	22. Author's Note

What the fuck is this and why is it here?

Good question.

This was one of my first works, deleted because I was intending on publishing it after some very hefty overhauls (fixing the relationship drama with his family, making his dad less of a random religious asshole, making things more realistic, fixing the godawful first four chapters, etc etc.)

But that isn't happening any time soon with all the other stuff I'm doing (Connor ain't saving his own ass).

What IS happening is a new work that I believe people will find interesting seeing as it will be 50% plot, 50% porn, and as everyone knows, kinky porn is the lifeblood of this godforsaken website. The story will be an AU of this world, so I wanted to have this up so people could get more of these characters if interested.

Also, I like this story. It's far from perfect and I can't stand the first few chapters (grats if you made it here, I'm sure many won't), but there's real heart in these characters. The original posting of this story got some traction, but I'm not sure this new one will because it got posted all at once (I am impatient). And that's alright. It's mostly like a placemarker now. If you like, then you like it.

If you have any comments on how to better this story, please let me know! This is a work I intend to polish over time, and any feedback is hugely appreciated.

Mandatory Q and A time I seem to do every time I write a story!

Q: Where are these characters from?

A: These are original characters in their entirety. The world is original. It's all set in a universe that encompasses much of my original stories.

Q: Who is Shift? Who is Rowan?

A: More original characters that show up in other stories, such as Editor, and Creator.

Q: What happens after this?

A: Calce and Andrew fall deeply in love, Andrew becomes a powerful warlock, they get hitched, have two children, and get heavy into the swinging and BDSM scene. Their relationship is probably one of the most stable ones I have.

Q: Is this in any way connected to Levi and Ryu?

A: Yes. Yes it is. And I am working on that. (anyone that doesn't get this and loves really kinky porn may want to read [This Story)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235802)


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